Manafort’s Northern Virginia trial on charges of bank fraud, tax evasion and failure to report foreign bank accounts is scheduled to begin July 25. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo Mueller team listening to Manafort’s jail phone calls Contrary to his lawyers’ court filings, the former Trump campaign chairman says he’s being treated like a ‘VIP’ in prison.

Paul Manafort may not be a free man. But the former Donald Trump campaign chairman’s jail conditions are hardly the stuff of Alcatraz.

According to telephone calls being monitored by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, Manafort has recently told people he’s being treated like a “VIP” at the Virginia prison where he’s been held since June 15.


The longtime GOP operative’s living arrangements, described in an eight-page motion filed Wednesday by Mueller’s prosecutors, also include “unique privileges” like a private, self-contained cell that’s bigger than what other inmates get, a private bathroom and shower, a personal telephone and daily access between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 10 p.m. to a workspace where Manafort can meet with his lawyers and prepare for his upcoming criminal trials.

Manafort also doesn’t have to wear a prison uniform at the Northern Neck Regional Jail about two hours south of Washington D.C.

But there are some drawbacks. Mueller’s team on Wednesday revealed it can listen in on any phone calls that Manafort has with people other than his lawyers, and it’s one of those conversations that prosecutors are now using in their opposition to the defendant’s request to postpone his upcoming Virginia trial until after a separate criminal case is finished in Washington D.C.

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Andrew Weissmann, a special counsel prosecutor leading the Manafort case, argued in the motion that Manafort may have ulterior motives in shifting around the order of his trials. As evidence, he cited a June 20 monitored phone call Manafort had with an unnamed person who did not believe the Washington D.C. venue was favorable. There, Manafort explained: “Think about how it’ll play elsewhere…There is a strategy to it, even in failure, but there’s a hope in it.”

Manafort's lawyers later on Wednesday accused Mueller's team of showing a "lack of concern" for due process.

"The Special Counsel’s opposition is self-serving and inaccurate. While the opposition does not generally misrepresent the confinement conditions its cavalier dismissal of the challenges of preparing for back-to-back complex white collar criminal trials while the defendant is in custody shows a lack of concern with fairness or due process," the lawyers wrote.

The lawyers also accused Mueller's team of taking some of Manafort's comments out of context.

"Armed with personal conversations between Mr. Manafort and his family, the Special Counsel selects snippets to support its version of events," they wrote. "The Special Counsel does not pause to consider the reasons a detained defendant might have to make his situation sound better when speaking with concerned friends and family."

For now, Manafort’s Northern Virginia trial on charges of bank fraud, tax evasion and failure to report foreign bank accounts is scheduled to begin July 25. But before that happens, U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III has scheduled oral arguments for Tuesday on Manafort’s motion to postpone the proceedings, as well as a related request for a change of venue from Alexandria to Roanoke, Virginia.

Ellis on Tuesday also ordered Manafort to be transferred to a detention center in Alexandria and rejected a last-minute request from the defendant’s lawyers to let their client continue to stay at the Northern Neck prison after they’d previously complained about logistical challenges that were hurting their ability to prepare for the trial.

“It is surprising and confusing when counsel identifies a problem and then opposes the most logical solution to that problem,” the judge wrote in a footnote in his decision, where he also questioned the Manafort lawyers’ argument about concerns for their client’s safety in Alexandria. The detention center’s staff are “very familiar with housing high-profile defendants including foreign and domestic terrorists, spies and traitors,” Ellis wrote.

Also Tuesday, Ellis issued an order demanding Manafort’s appearance in his courtroom for the start of the July 25 trial.

In another filing, Mueller’s team on Wednesday also asked the federal court to issue 100 blank subpoenas to potential witnesses in the upcoming Manafort trial. And Ellis also ordered on Wednesday that a panel of prospective jurors be convened on July 24 to fill out a questionnaire, indicating that plans for the trial are proceeding rapidly.

In arguing against the trial’s delay, Mueller team’s offered Ellis a very different picture of Manafort’s prison conditions compared with the descriptions detailed by attorneys for the former Trump campaign leader. Last week, in an appeal to a federal appeals court in Washington aimed at overturning their client’s pre-trial jailing, the lawyers complained that Manafort was “locked in his cell for at least 23 hours per day (excluding visits from his attorneys)” and that he was in “solitary confinement because the facility cannot otherwise guarantee his safety.”

But Manafort has been hardly cut off from the outside world, according to the Mueller prosecutors. He has access to a personal telephone in his cell that he’s allowed to use for more than 12 hours a day to speak with his lawyers and other people. During the last three weeks, Manafort has also had more than 100 phone calls with his lawyers, speaking with them every day and often several times a day, as well as another 200 calls with other people.

Mueller’s team also disputed what defense attorneys have told the court concerning the rules surrounding how much time Manafort can spend on the phone. While Manafort’s lawyers have said he’s limited to 10 minutes per call, the special counsel’s office countered that was “incorrect” and explained that the calls can actually last 15 minutes, with no restrictions on how many calls he makes.

“Meaning that Manafort immediately can reconnect with his attorneys whenever the fifteen minutes expire,” Weissman wrote. Citing telephone logs, the Mueller prosecutor added that Manafort has had “successive” phone sessions with his lawyers lasting more than 40 minutes.

Manafort’s calls with his lawyers “are not monitored,” Weissman said.

While in prison, Manafort also has access to a laptop to review documents and prepare for his trial, and the jail has “made extra accommodations” for Manafort to use the computer, including an extension cord that lets him work in his cell so he doesn’t have to go to the separate workspace.

Manafort is not allowed to send or receive emails while in jail. But Mueller’s prosecutors said Manafort “appears to have developed a workaround.” During his monitored phone calls, Manafort has told people he reads and composes emails on a second laptop that his lawyers have “shuttled in and out” of the jail. Then his lawyers sent the messages after they’ve left the prison.