Paul Manafort's “VIP” prison experience might be over

Paul Manafort hasn’t experienced life in prison quite like his fellow inmates: He’s been held in a private cell with his own bathroom, desk, laptop and phone that he’s been able to use over 12 hours a day. He hasn’t even had to wear a prison uniform.

He’s being treated like a “VIP,” he told associates on the outside, according to a court filing made Wednesday by prosecutors who monitored his phone calls.

But those luxuries, such as they were, may now be over. At least in Virginia’s Northern Neck Regional Jail.

On Wednesday, a judge ordered that Manafort be moved to a facility in Alexandria, closer to the courthouse.

The judge’s ruling followed an about-face by Manafort’s own lawyers regarding the location of his detention. Last week, his team had argued that his July 25 trial date should be postponed, because the 100-mile distance between his attorneys’ offices and the prison was complicating their efforts to prepare his defense.

Read more: Prison is going to make Paul Manafort much easier to flip, prosecutors say

But when the judge responded with an order that Manafort be moved closer, his lawyers reversed course, saying moving him would imperil his safety. The judge disagreed, and slapped them with a strikingly firm rebuke.

“It is surprising and confusing when counsel identifies a problem and then opposes the most logical solution to that problem,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis wrote in an order Tuesday evening. He said Manafort’s lawyers had given no reason why he’d be any less safe in the new prison.

Prosecutors used transcripts of Manafort’s monitored phone calls against him to argue that being in Northern Neck hasn’t really hindered him from preparing a defense.

“On July 4, 2018, Manafort remarked in a taped prison call that he is able to visit with his lawyers every day, and that he has ‘all my files like I would at home,’” they wrote in a court filing.

READ: Prison is going to make Paul Manafort much easier to flip, prosecutors say

Now, Manafort’s being sent to the Alexandria Detention Center, which Judge Ellis tartly observed is “very familiar with housing high-profile defendants including foreign and domestic terrorists, spies and traitors.”

Ellis’s tone suggests he wasn’t swayed by the stated rationale for seeking a delay, and may be exasperated by Manafort’s antics, said Jens David Ohlin, Cornell Law vice dean and an expert in international criminal law.

“Basically the judge is accusing Manafort’s lawyers of making a disingenuous argument,” Ohlin said. “He called their bluff.”

Ohlin speculated Manafort’s team may have been trying to delay the trial date in an attempt to buy time for some other, unknown reason — including, possibly, to wait for a presidential pardon from Trump.

“Maybe they’re hoping that the longer they delay, the more likely it is they’ll get a pardon,” Ohlin said.

Manafort has been held in Northern Neck Regional Prison in rural Warsaw, Virginia, since June 15 in a private cell labeled “VIP.” He landed there after for allegedly attempting to tamper with witnesses in the government’s ongoing investigations into alleged money laundering, bank fraud and other charges.

But his conditions aren’t really much better than those of the other inmates being kept in group pods, Ted Hull, Northern Neck’s superintendent, told VICE News last month.

“VIP is just a word,” Hull insisted. “It doesn’t connote an easier level of incarceration.”

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Hull confirmed that Manafort’s cell had its own private toilet, phone and television, but he said those on the outside shouldn’t think of his conditions as luxurious.

“It’s what you think it is: It’s jail,” Hull said. “It’s not like this guy is sitting in a leather chair.”

Cover image: On Wednesday, a U.S. District Judge ordered Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's former campaign manager, to be moved from his prison cell in Virginia’s Northern Neck Regional Jail. (04/05/2018 REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)