Paul Manafort transferred to prison closer to Washington

Former Trump campaign leader, Paul Manafort, is transferred from a rural prison in Virginia to a closer Washington

judge in Washington amid allegations of manipulating witnesses, complained that restrictions at the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw and its distance from the courthouse made it difficult to prepare for the trial.

A detention center in Alexandria, Virginia, "to make sure the defendant has access to his lawyer and can adequately prepare his defense."

Manafort waits for separate trials in two jurisdictions – Washington and Alexandria – over a slew of frauds, money laundering and other charges arising from his lucrative lobbying work in Ukraine. He pleaded not guilty to the charges, which were brought by Special Adviser Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 elections and possible collusion by the Trump campaign.

Manafort was placed under house arrest after his indictment. But last month, prosecutors alleged that he and a Russian partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, used encrypted messages to reach witnesses in one of the cases.

"I can not turn a blind eye to that," Judge Amy Berman Jackson told him. before revoking his deposit.

US The marshals brought him to Northern Neck, Warsaw, about a hundred kilometers from Washington, where he was placed in a so-called VIP unit that once housed the former star of the NFL, Michael Vick. According to his lawyers, this equates to solitary confinement and hampers his ability to meet them.

Amy Bertsch, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's office in Alexandria, said that she did not know what kind of accommodation Manafort would have at the facility. There are usually 400 inmates wearing olive green overalls with the word "detainee".

"We have detained other prominent inmates," Bertsch said, naming Zacarias Moussaoui, a former suspect in the Sept. 11 bombing. Times reporter Judith Miller and FBI spokesman Robert Hanssen.