Weisselberg put in isolated unit
Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg started his jail sentence Wednesday in a Rikers Island jail originally built to house people with contagious diseases, jail records show.
Weisselberg, who was sentenced to five months for perjuring himself during Donald Trump’s civil fraud case, is housed in the West Facility’s Communicable Disease Unit with 85 other detainees in one of several smaller buildings, each containing nine or 10 of the specially designed cells.
The CDU was built in 1991 as a medical holding facility. But because of the isolation of the cells, it has since also become a place where violent detainees are held, such as Guy Rivera, the accused killer of Police Officer Jonathan Diller, and people with high-profile cases, like Weisselberg.
“In a way, it’s like an army camp, with a set of smaller buildings arrayed in a square around a recreation yard,” a source familiar with the jail said. “It’s a nice place to work because the inmates are double contained.”
“The whole thing is designed so nothing happens to this man,” the source said. “Because he has that celebrity status, they will be very careful.”
To get his food in the West Facility’s Communicable Disease Unit, Weisselberg will have to emerge from his cell to a small enclosed vestibule, the source said.
The food on a tray covered by a plastic shell is delivered on a cart and placed in a slot in a second door.
If he wants to study law books, he can request them to be brought to his cell or go to the law library for an hour a day, the source said.
The air he breathes will be filtered through a system built when the unit opened to prevent germs from circulating inside.
The 86 people housed in the CDU are part of a total population of 672 people at West, including detainees transferred in to 50-person dorms from two closed jails — the Anna M. Kross Center and the Vernon C. Bain Center, Correction Department spokeswoman Latima Johnson said.
“It is our agency’s mission to create a safe and supportive environment for everyone who enters our custody,” Johnson said. “Mr. Weisselberg will receive the same standard of treatment as any other individual in DOC custody.”