Bill Mersey, the cellmate of Paul Manafort, said the former Trump campaign manager stood up to criminals during the three weeks the two spent together in a New York prison cell.

The 69-year-old inmate told the Daily Mail on Thursday that Manafort handled himself well in prison after getting harassed the first day he was brought into the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. "On the first evening, the gangbangers got in his face, saying 'Yo, you Trump's boy?'" Mersey said about Manafort, adding that the gangbangers "thought he was superrich."

"But Manafort didn't blink, he didn't back down. He said, 'I grew up in the streets just like you brother.' After that, they left him alone. He dealt with people in a straightforward manner, and he was not to be intimidated. I thought he was tough," he added.

Mersey said one-time Manafort confronted one of the "tougher guys" for making too much noise in front of his cell. "I was impressed, I would never have done that," he added. Mersey pointed to Manafort's 6'2", 230-pound build as part of what makes him "very impressive on the first meeting."

The inmate also met convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who he claimed did not handle prison as well. Mersey said the financial mogul acted "very scared" and once asked him whether he should get "a black inmate for protection." Epstein, 66, died in August from an apparent suicide, according to the New York medical examiner.