Paul Manafort’s solitary confinement includes personal laptop, phone, shower, workroom

Paul Manafort

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Andrew Prokop is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He’s worked at Vox since the site’s launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker’s Washington, DC, bureau.

The reports sounded dire. Former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort had been jailed last month after a judge ruled he violated his conditions of release while awaiting trial— and now, his lawyers wrote, he had been “housed in solitary confinement” in the Northern Neck Regional Jail. Manafort was “locked in his cell for at least 23 hours per day (excluding visits from his attorneys).”

But a new filing by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team makes Manafort’s time behind bars seem ... well, not quite so bad as all that might make you think.

Over the past week, reports based solely on the word of Manafort’s lawyers prompted a flurry of commentary about the allegedly horrendous mistreatment he’s been suffering. Solitary confinement is “basically a deathtrap,” former New York City police commissioner (and convicted felon) Bernard Kerik wrote. “A 12’ x 8’ solid steel or concrete box with a metal bed, stainless steel sink and toilet, and if you’re lucky, a small concrete or metal writing table and stool.”

Other conservative commentators also weighed in:

Even some who are not at all fans of Trump or Manafort weighed in to criticize the practice as a policy. “Solitary confinement is still torture,” Splinter News’s Katherine Krueger wrote, “even if it’s happening to Paul Manafort.”

However, Mueller’s new filing, if accurate, reveals that the Manafort version of solitary confinement comes with certain amenities.

Manafort “is not confined to a cell”
Between 8:30 am and 10 pm, Manafort “has access to a separate workroom at the jail to meet with his attorneys and legal team”
He has “his own bathroom and shower facility”
He has “his own personal telephone,” which he can use more than 12 hours a day
Those calls are limited to 15 minutes each, but when they cut off, he can just call the person back immediately
He’s made nearly 300 phone calls in the last three weeks
He has a personal laptop he can use in his unit to review materials and prepare for his trial
He was provided an extension cord to let him use his laptop in either his unit or his workroom
He’s not allowed to send emails, but he “has developed a workaround” for even that — his legal team brings in a laptop, he drafts the emails on that laptop, and they send them out after they leave.
He’s being treated like a “VIP,” according to his own account on a monitored phone call.

Whether all this is akin to “waterboarding” or a strategy to “torture” Manafort into “madness,” I’ll leave for others to decide.

But whatever the conditions currently are, Manafort’s situation is about to change. On Wednesday, Judge T.S. Ellis III ordered him moved from his current jail in rural Warsaw, Virginia to a detention center in Alexandria, Virginia, to await his trial. That trial — the first of two Manafort will face — is scheduled to begin in just two weeks, on July 25.

You can read the new filing from Mueller’s team below, or by clicking this link.

This embedded content failed to load.

You’ve read 1 article in the last month

Here at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you — threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.

Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.

We rely on readers like you — join us.