After Whining About Rural Jail, Manafort Asks Judge To Reverse Order To Move Him

on April 19, 2018 in Washington, DC.
WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 19: Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort leaves the. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse after a motion hearing on April 19, 2018 in Washington, DC. Manafort has pleaded not guilty to... WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 19: Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort leaves the. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse after a motion hearing on April 19, 2018 in Washington, DC. Manafort has pleaded not guilty to charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, making false statements, and failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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After previously complaining that the rural jail where he is awaiting trial was inconvenient for his trial prep, Paul Manafort asked a federal judge on Tuesday to reverse a previous order moving him to a detention center closer to the courthouse where his case will go to trial later this month.

“In light of Mr. Manafort’s continuing detention and after further reflection, issues of distance and inconvenience must yield to concerns about his safety and, more importantly, the challenges he will face in adjusting to a new place of confinement and the changing circumstances of detention two weeks before trial,” Manafort said in the court filing. “With these considerations in mind, Mr. Manafort respectfully asks the Court to permit him to remain in his current place of detention.”

The order U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis had issued earlier Tuesday moving Manafort came after a Manafort request that the trial in Virginia be delayed until after the trial for separate case Special Counsel Robert Mueller brought against Manafort in D.C. was finished. In the request for the delay, Manafort complained that it took two hours for his lawyers to travel to the rural Virginia jail, and his detention there made meetings with his attorneys “far more infrequent and enormously time-consuming compared to when he remained on house arrest and subject to GPS monitoring in Alexandria, Virginia.”

Manafort was sent to jail while he awaited trial by the judge in the D.C. case due to allegations he engaged in witness tampering.

Ellis ordered that he be moved to a detention center in Alexandria, from the jail 100 miles away in Warsaw, Virginia, “to ensure the defendant has access to his counsel and can adequately prepare his defense.”

Manafort, in his request that he stay in Warsaw after all, said that the issues he raised about the location of the jail were “aimed more at the difficulty of preparing for trial given Mr. Manafort’s detention versus his prior status on pretrial release.”

Read the full request below:

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