Paul Manafort, the former chairman of President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, has been released from jail to serve the rest of his sentence at his home due to health concerns stemming from the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, according to a report.
ABC News reports:
Manafort was released from FCI Loretto in central Pennsylvania early Wednesday morning, the two sources said. When reached by ABC News a lawyer for Manafort declined to comment on the matter. The Bureau of Prisons also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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The decision to move Manafort to home confinement comes after his attorneys wrote a letter to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) last month requesting that he be immediately transferred to home confinement because he is at high risk of contracting COVID-19 because of his age and pre-existing conditions.
“We write on behalf of our client to request that the Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) immediately transfer Mr. Manafort to home confinement to serve the remainder of his sentence or, alternatively, for the duration of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic in accordance with Attorney General William Barr’s directives to the BOP on March 26 and April 3, 2020, and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (“CARES Act”), enacted on March 27, 2020,” Manafort lawyers Todd Blanche and Kevin Downing wrote in an April letter obtained by ABC News.
The development comes after Manafort was briefly hospitalized in Pennsylvania in December when he suffered a “cardiac event” in prison, ABC News reported.
Manafort was convicted last year on tax, bank fraud, and conspiracy charges as part of then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into now-debunked Russia collusion with the Trump campaign and is serving a seven-and-a-half-year sentence. Shortly after being charged in the Mueller probe, Manafort was also charged for mortgage fraud in New York, though a judge has since dismissed the charges.