Paul Manafort, shown here arriving to a New York court session last year, was released from prison Wednesday to home confinement. Seth Wenig/AP hide caption
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Seth Wenig/AP
Paul Manafort was released from federal prison to home confinement early Wednesday morning due to concerns about coronavirus exposure, his attorney Todd Blanche tells NPR.
Manafort, who was once Donald Trump’s presidential campaign chairman, is 71-years-old and serving a 7-year prison sentence.
He had been serving his time in a low-security prison in Pennsylvania after he was convicted of tax fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy. The charges were brought as part of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe on the election meddling by Russia in the 2016 presidential election.
Manafort had sent a letter to the Bureau of Prisons asking to be released to home confinement. He argued that his health and age made him susceptible to contracting the deadly virus, which can spread quickly in places like prisons where social distancing is difficult to achieve.
Once a globetrotting lobbyist, Manafort has suffered a series of health challenges recently, including a hospitalization in December due to what his lawyer described as a “cardiac event.”
He was sentenced to prison time by two federal courts. In 2018, a jury in Virginia found him guilty on eight of 18 counts in his tax and bank fraud trial, related to work Manafort did in Ukraine.
He later pleaded guilty to two additional felony counts in Washington, D.C.
NPR Justice Correspondent Ryan Lucas contributed to this report.
