Virginia jail says Manafort is not receiving ‘special privileges’

Ted Hull, the superintendent at the Virginia jail where Paul Manafort is being held, said President Trump’s former campaign chairman is not getting any “special privileges.”

Manafort was sent to the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw on Friday after a judge revoked his bail and house arrest amid accusations from the special counsel that Manafort had attempted to tamper with potential witnesses.

According to NBC News, Manafort’s housing unit in the jail was originally listed as “VIP-1.”

Hull later said the categorization was a mistake, and the detail had been wiped off of Manafort’s listing.

{mosads}Hull said the listing drew considerable backlash from concerned citizens who kept calling him inquiring about Manafort’s housing status.

“I’ve probably gotten a dozen calls — people saying, ‘I want to know why he’s in VIP!'” Hull said. 

“All that is is a name and number,” Hull said. “It’s a small, fully functional, self-contained cell unit for high-profile inmates.”

According to NBC, a regular unit holds anywhere between eight and 16 cells with a shared common shower, whereas the VIP unit holds all of the commodities regular inmates share but for a single inmate.

“There’s no special privileges for him,” Hull said further of Manafort’s current housing status. “There’s nothing special about him beyond the notoriety of his particular situation.”

Manafort remains able to videoconference with his attorneys, according to the jail’s website, and is allowed to have no-contact visits (with a glass partition separating him and his loved ones) and an iPad-like tablet that lets him make jail-recorded phone calls, listen to music and play solitaire, NBC News reports.

Manafort has pleaded not guilty to a number of charges in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, including money laundering, tax fraud and bank fraud conspiracy.

Earlier this year, a Washington, D.C., judge set Manafort’s trial date for Sept. 17, just weeks before the 2018 midterm elections.

Trump has sought distance from his former campaign chief, pointing out he was only with the 2016 team for a short time. And on Friday, after Manafort’s bail was revoked, he called the treatment “very unfair.”

Wow, what a tough sentence for Paul Manafort, who has represented Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and many other top political people and campaigns. Didn’t know Manafort was the head of the Mob. What about Comey and Crooked Hillary and all of the others? Very unfair!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2018