Former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has been released from prison due to the risk of the new coronavirus, his lawyer said on Wednesday.
Read also: Trump presidency caught up in justice for its ties to Russia
71-year-old Manafort was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison last year for various frauds discovered in the sprawling Russian investigation into suspected collusion between Moscow and Trump's campaign team during the 2016 presidential election.
The former political consultant, who was incarcerated in a Pennsylvania prison, suffers from high blood pressure and respiratory problems, which makes him more vulnerable to Covid-19, said last month in a letter to the prison authorities his lawyer Kevin Downing.
The latter said that his client would serve the rest of his sentence at his home in Alexandria, in the suburbs of Washington. Paul Manafort is one of 2,471 inmates in US federal prisons to have been released (out of approximately 150,000 inmates in total) due to the pandemic.
President Donald Trump expressed support after his conviction, saying he was the victim of a "witch hunt".
Russian investigation
Another of his relatives who fell in the wake of the Russian investigation, his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, asked last month to be released from prison, to no avail. Cohen was sentenced to three years behind bars for fraud, perjury and violation of election campaign laws after paying two women in 2016 to end their alleged affair with Donald Trump.
According to American media, the man who has long presented himself as the “pit bull” of the billionaire is preparing to publish in the coming months a shocking book on his years of collaboration with his former boss.
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