Paul Manafort, former campaign manager of President Donald Trump, is seeking an early release from the low-security federal prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania, where he’s currently serving time for a series of financial crimes. As Politico reports, Kevin Downing, Manafort’s lawyer, requested on Monday that his client, who is 71, be transferred to serve the remainder of his seven-and-a-half-year sentence from home. In a letter obtained by Politico and addressed to the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the prison warden, Downing wrote that “age and pre-existing health conditions” make it “imperative” that Manafort, who is at “high risk of contracting COVID-19,” be “transferred to home confinement immediately in order to minimize the likelihood” of him “contracting or spreading the potentially fatal disease.”
Downing cites Manafort’s several pre-existing health conditions and lists eight of the 11 prescription medications that are “relevant to the requested relief.” The letter states that “these medications as well as Mr. Manafort’s health history make plain that Mr. Manafort is at a significantly higher risk for serious illness or death,” adding that Manafort has been a “model inmate” who is “serving his sentence for non-violent crimes related to tax and mortgage fraud (for which there were no victims).” Politico notes that Manafort appeared “pale and weak at times” near the end of his 2018 trial and, at a hearing that fall, “appeared in court in a wheelchair with no shoe on one foot” due to gout and other ailments.
The coronavirus crisis has spread throughout American prison facilities, infecting 388 federal inmates and 201 staff nationwide, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Thirteen inmates have died from the virus. Politico notes that “advocates for inmates and prison guard union officials say the true infection rate is substantially higher” due to the “minimal” testing of prisoners. Earlier this month, Attorney General William Barr ordered the BOP to expedite the release of eligible inmates from three prison complexes overwhelmed by levels of infection that are “materially affecting the functioning of the Bureau of Prisons.”
At present, the prison where Manafort is serving time has not reported any COVID-19 cases among prisoners, guards, or workers. Downing wrote that “it is only a matter of time” before this changes, hence his urgent request that his client be removed and confined at home—for the next four-and-a-half years. These types of appeals have been an enduring feature of Manafort’s defense so far. In his first sentencing last March, Judge T.S. Ellis said that Manafort has “lived an otherwise blameless life” and gave him just 47 months in prison. As my colleague Bess Levin reported, Manafort—who Trump once said has been treated worse than “Alfonse Capone”—claimed during his second sentencing that he should get no additional jail time for the numerous crimes he committed given that he is his wife’s “primary caretaker.” (Downing’s letter states that his wife “is in great health with no known exposure to or exhibited symptoms of COVID-19.”)
“I know that it was my conduct that brought me here today. For that, I am remorseful,” Manafort said during his sentencing last year, asking Judge Amy Berman Jackson for leniency. “While I cannot undo the past, I can ensure that the future will be very different…I can say to you with conviction that my behavior in the future will be very different.” And last June, he avoided a transfer to Rikers Island jail while awaiting trial for a separate case—a decision that a Justice Department official said was made in consideration of “Mr. Manafort’s unique health and safety needs” that his attorneys had raised concerns about.
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