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Former Trump campaign president Paul Manafort has been released from prison just one year after serving his seven-and-a-half-year sentence to serve the rest at home after claiming that he feared being exposed to the coronavirus behind bars.
Manafort, 71, was serving a seven-year sentence for bank fraud and tax evasion at Loretto Federal Prison, Pennsylvania. He was sentenced last March.
Last month, her lawyers wrote to the Bureau of Prisons alleging that she was particularly vulnerable to the virus due to her age and pre-existing health conditions including “high blood pressure, liver disease, and respiratory disease.”
ABC reports that Manafort was quietly released from the correctional facility on Wednesday morning despite the fact that there was not a single case of the virus there.
It is unclear where his time will now pass. Manafort has several properties including a condo in Alexandria, Virginia, and a house in Palm Beach, Florida.
Details of his release were not immediately available Wednesday morning.
He is now the last Trump associate to have his prison term interrupted by the pandemic.
Paul Manafort (pictured in June) was quietly released from Pennsylvania federal prison, where he was serving a seven-year sentence on Wednesday. Now it will serve the rest at home
Manafort was serving time at FCI Loretto in Pennsylvania. There are no confirmed cases there, but his lawyers said he would be at risk if it spread.
Michael Cohen, 53, a former attorney for the president who secretly negotiated money payments with women, including Stormy Daniels, will be released in late May.
Roger Stone, the 67-year-old former aide to the president, has been sentenced on charges including lying to Congress and witness tampering, delayed by 30 days.
Trump last month also hinted at Manafort and Stone’s forgiveness.
He called the FBI investigators who shot the two men down as’ human scum ‘and said,’ They’ll find out what I’m going to do.
‘I am not going to say what I am going to do. But it all turned out to be a scam. ‘
For other Trump associates, Roger Stone (left) and Michael Cohen (right), the pandemic cut prison terms. Stone was due to start a 40-month prison sentence in April, but was delayed by 30 days. Cohen will be released at the end of the month to complete his sentence at home.
Michael Avenatti, former attorney for Stormy Daniels, has also been released from prison early.
Michael Avenatti, the former Stormy Daniels attorney who is in custody on a series of charges including fraud, has also been released amid fears of exposure to COVID-19.
Separately, the Justice Department asked a judge last week to drop the case against Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
The decision sparked outrage among Trump critics and sparked claims that Attorney General Bill Barr was politically influenced.
There have been no confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the prison where Manafort was being held, but sources told ABC that due to its open design, the virus would spread rapidly if only one person were infected.
The facility is an old monastery, so it has an open configuration.
In their letter to the Bureau of Prisons, they said: ‘Given the increasing number of cases in Pennsylvania and the increasing challenges in evaluating inmates and staff potentially exposed to COVID-19, it is only a matter of time before the infection spreads. spread to staff and inmates at FCI Loretto, at which time it may be too late to prevent high-risk inmates, such as Mr. Manafort, from contracting the life-threatening virus.
A court sketch shows Manafort in a wheelchair at her sentencing hearing in March last year.
Manafort was Trump’s campaign manager. He is shown with the then candidate and Ivanka Trump in 2016, on the stage of the RNC
Manafort was convicted of bank fraud and tax evasion and was sentenced last March
COVID-19 has spread rapidly through other prison populations and represents huge percentages of the total case count in some states.
In New York City, prisoners on Rikers Island were released early in the pandemic amid fears that they would be exposed if they had to stay behind bars.
Officials at the time said they were faced with the dilemma of protecting public health and society.
AG Barr ordered federal prisons to maximize their release efforts where they could and states have taken their own steps to reduce prison populations.
