Manafort released from prison amid pandemic
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been released from prison and is now in home confinement as the coronavirus pandemic spreads in the federal corrections system.
Todd Blanche, one of Manafort’s attorneys, said the 71-year-old was released Wednesday morning. Manafort is serving a combined sentence of 71⁄2years in prison from two criminal cases that resulted from the special counsel investigation on Russia’s election meddling in 2016.
Manafort was convicted in Virginia for a scheme to defraud banks and taxpayers out of millions of dollars he had amassed through illicit lobbying. He also pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges of not disclosing his lobbying work and tampering with witnesses in a related Washington, D.C., case.
Last month, Attorney General William Barr announced a plan to expedite the release of vulnerable prisoners to home confinement as infections and fatalities mounted.
Barr asked Bureau of Prison officials to grant home confinement based on factors including prisoners’ age and vulnerability to COVID-19, their conduct in prison, and the crimes for which they were convicted.
Last month, Manafort’s attorneys asked prison officials to release him to home confinement, saying his old age and health conditions put him at “high risk” of a COVID-19 infection.
Manafort’s attorneys said their client would serve his confinement with his wife in a three-bedroom apartment in Northern Virginia.
In a court filing last month, an official said the Bureau of Prisons is prioritizing inmates who have served 50% of their punishment. Officials are also prioritizing inmates with short prison sentences: those who have 18 months or less left and have served 25% of their time.
Manafort has served about 25% of a 47-month sentence and was scheduled for release in November 2024. The prison where he was held also isn’t among the facilities where Barr said officials should prioritize releasing inmates. But prison officials have wide discretion over who is granted home confinement.
Since late March, 2,471 inmates have been designated for home confinement, the Bureau of Prisons said.
As of Wednesday, 2,818 inmates and 262 staffers have been infected with COVID-19 across the federal prison system. Fifty inmates have died. The pandemic has not reached the low-security prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania, where Manafort was held. His attorneys said it’s only a matter of time before the infection spreads in the facility.
Manafort is one of a half a dozen former Trump aides and associates who either pleaded guilty or were convicted of crimes as a result of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson suspended a jail sentence for Manafort’s former partner, Rick Gates, noting the coronavirus threat. Gates, a former Trump campaign aide who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and making false statements about his status as a foreign agent, received a 45-day jail sentence that he must serve intermittently over three years of probation.
Another former Trump aide, Michael Cohen, had been approved for home confinement last month and had been due for release May 1. But his attorney, Lanny Davis, said Wednesday that the president’s one-time personal lawyer remains in federal prison for “unexplained” reasons.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to charges that included campaign finance violations for paying hush money to women who claimed to have had sex with Trump and for lying to Congress. He was scheduled for release in 2021.