I am sure that Kim Kardashian is already on top of this but Paul Manafort, the president’s one-time campaign chairman who’s serving a federal prison sentence, is heading to the notorious Rikers Island jail in New York City where he’s expected to spend his time in solitary confinement while he awaits state fraud charges.
Manafort is already serving seven-and-a-half years in a federal prison in Pennsylvania prison for federal bank fraud, tax and conspiracy charges in two related cases. “The Manhattan district attorney obtained an indictment of Mr. Manafort on state mortgage fraud charges in an effort to ensure he would still face prison if Mr. Trump pardoned him for his federal crimes,” the New York Times reports.
Manafort, 70, who once owned a $15,000 ostrich skin jacket, is expected to be arraigned on the new charges in State Supreme Court in Manhattan later this month, and his lawyers are reportedly fighting to get him reassigned to a federal jail in New York until then.
From the Times:
High-profile inmates are generally held in protective custody on Rikers Island, a network of nine jails with a total of 7,500 inmates, including pretrial detainees and convicts serving sentences of a year or less. Inmates in protective custody are isolated from the general population under heavy guard.
Rikers Island has been plagued by violence and mismanagement over the years prompting efforts to close the jail complex.
A law-enforcement official familiar with the correction department’s practices, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss security measures, said Mr. Manafort would most likely be housed in a former prison hospital on the island. That is where most high-profile detainees are held, including police officers, those accused of killing police officers, politicians and celebrities.
Can you hear that noise?
It’s the sound of white tears falling into a pile of money.
That didn’t stop the opposition for noticing how the karmic gods got this one right.
According to the Times, on March 13, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. hit Manafort with 16 state felonies, “including residential mortgage fraud, and accusing him of a yearlong scheme in which he allegedly falsified business records to obtain millions of dollars in loans.”
While the president has power to issue pardons in federal crimes, he has no jurisdiction over state cases.
Trump has already noted that he won’t be pardoning Manafort, but Trump is also a notorious liar who generally forgets what he says and does whatever he wants. He’s not only defended Manafort, he’s called him a brave man despite his numerous felonies.
The Times notes that Manafort’s stay in Rikers will be a far cry from his federal stomping grounds. Manafort is being housed in a “Pennsylvania at F.C.I. Loretto, a low-security prison with 913 inmates and an adjacent minimum-security satellite camp with 93, according to the United States Bureau of Prisons’ website. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Manafort is in the prison or the camp.”
Either way his federal prison stay will be nothing like his time on Rikers. It’s almost as if America has decided that Manafort is a criminal and therefore should be treated like a criminal. It’s insane!