Ex-Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort released from prison to home confinement

Paul Manafort, the disgraced former chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was released from prison on Wednesday and will serve out the rest of his sentence under home confinement.

Lawyers for Manafort, who is serving a seven-year sentence for charges that emerged from special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election, had argued their client was at high risk from the coronavirus due to his age and underlying health issues.

ABC News, the first to report Manafort’s release, said the 71-year-old was let go from the FCI Loretto prison in Pennsylvania on Wednesday morning. He will be confined to his apartment in northern Virginia.

Manafort was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in March 2019, for convictions including unregistered lobbying, tax fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. He worked for Trump’s election campaign for five months in 2016, including as campaign chair.

Manafort’s lawyers wrote to the Federal Bureau of Prisons in April, asking that he be transferred to home confinement for “the remainder of his sentence or, alternatively, for the duration of the on-going Covid-19 pandemic”.

The attorneys wrote that Manafort has “high blood pressure, liver disease, and respiratory ailments”.

In March 2019 Manafort arrived at his sentencing hearing in Washington DC, in a wheelchair, suffering from gout.

He has been in custody since June 2018, when a federal judge revoked his bail after Manafort was charged with attempting to influence witness testimony. Manafort later pleaded guilty to a count related to witness tampering.

In April the American Civil Liberties Union, in conjunction with several epidemiologists, said jails could cause an extra 99,000 US deaths from coronavirus, owing to overcrowding and only basic levels of sanitation.

The Department of Justice (DoJ) issued guidelines in April relating to the release of inmates to home confinement. The DoJ said it would focus on inmates at low or medium-security prisons, prioritizing the release of those who have served half of their sentence, or have 18 months or less left and have served at least 25% of their time.

Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, who is serving a three- year prison sentence for crimes including facilitating illegal payments to silence two women who alleged affairs with Trump, is due to be moved to home confinement later this month.