Paul Manafort To Be Transferred To Rikers Island & Held In Solitary Confinement

Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump‘s former campaign chairman, will be given no special treatment when he is transferred to Rikers Island, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Tuesday.

“He is going to be treated, as much as humanly possible, like any other inmate, and would have the same rights and responsibilities,” de Blasio said at an unrelated press conference. “Obviously there are safety questions that have to be attended to.”

Manafort is currently serving a 7.5-year prison sentence in a Pennsylvania federal prison as a result of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 election. In August, Manafort was convicted of a series of financial crimes and in September he pleaded guilty to another set of charges.

Earlier this year, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. obtained an indictment against Manafort on charges of mortgage fraud. A state judge has now ordered him to be moved as early as Thursday to Rikers Island, where he will be held in solitary confinement.

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Though Trump has the ability to issue pardons for federal crimes, Vance has stated that this power does not extend to state infractions.

“No one is beyond the law in New York,” Vance said in a March statement.

Rikers is mainly used to house pre-trial detainees, but the outdated facility has become a source of violence. Its isolated location makes it difficult to transfer inmates to courthouses, which can delay trial times even further. The city is planning to close the facility by 2026 and replace it with modern jails in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx.

Article by Alessa Erawan

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