Posted on 05/13/20
| News Source: FOX News
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been transferred to home confinement after he sought the transfer due to the health risk in prison from coronavirus, Fox News has confirmed.
Manafort, 70, was serving his sentence at FCI Loretto, a low-security federal prison in Loretto, Pa.
"He is on his way home on home confinement. He will be with his wife in Va. He is obviously relieved," Manafort attorney Todd Blanche told Fox News on Wednesday.
In March 2019, Manafort was sentenced to more than seven years in prison after he pleaded guilty to foreign lobbying and witness tampering, as well as tax fraud and conspiracy.
Manafort has faced health challenges throughout his time in prison, and was hospitalized in December due to a cardiac event. Before he was sentenced, Manafort’s legal team had argued that his health challenges contributed to his misstatements in the case brought against him by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Manafort’s transfer comes after Attorney General Bill Barr in March instructed the Bureau of Prisons to move nonviolent inmates who were at risk of contracting COVID-19 out of prison facilities and allow them to serve out their sentences in home confinement.
"Many inmates will be safer in BOP facilities where the population is controlled and there is ready access to doctors and medical care," Barr wrote in a two-page memo to BOP last month. ”But for some eligible inmates, home confinement might be more effective in protecting their health.”
Barr directed the bureau to prioritize home confinement for prisoners in low- and minimum-security facilities who pose no safety threat to the community and have a low likelihood of recidivism.
Criminals who have committed violent crimes or sexual offenses are not eligible for home confinement. Read more at FOX News