Paul John Manafort Jr. (; born April 1, 1949) is an American former lobbyist, political consultant, and attorney. A long-time Republican Party campaign consultant, he chaired the Trump presidential campaign from June to August 2016. Manafort served as an adviser to the U.S. presidential campaigns of Republicans Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole. In 1980, he co-founded the Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Black, Manafort & Stone, along with principals Charles R. Black Jr. and Roger Stone, joined by Peter G. Kelly in 1984. Manafort often lobbied on behalf of foreign leaders, including former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych, former dictator of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, former dictator of Zaire Mobutu Sese Seko, and Angolan guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi. Lobbying to serve the interests of foreign governments requires registration with the United States Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA); on June 27, 2017, he retroactively registered as a foreign agent.
On October 27, 2017, Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates were indicted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on multiple charges arising from their consulting work for the pro-Russian government President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, before Yanukovych was overthrown during the Revolution of Dignity in February 2014. The indictment came at the request of Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation. In June 2018, additional charges were filed against Manafort for obstruction of justice and witness tampering that are alleged to have occurred while he was under house arrest, and he was ordered to jail.
Manafort was prosecuted in two federal courts. In August 2018, he stood trial in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and was convicted on eight charges of tax and bank fraud. Manafort was next prosecuted on ten other charges, but this effort ended in a mistrial with Manafort later admitting his guilt. In the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Manafort pled guilty to two charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering, while agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors.
On November 26, 2018, Mueller reported that Manafort violated his plea deal by repeatedly lying to investigators. On February 13, 2019, D.C. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson concurred, voiding the plea deal. On March 7, 2019, Judge T. S. Ellis III sentenced Manafort to 47 months in prison. On March 13, 2019, Jackson sentenced Manafort to an additional 43 months in prison. Minutes after his sentencing, New York state prosecutors charged Manafort with sixteen state felonies. On December 18, 2019, the state charges against him were dismissed because of the doctrine of double jeopardy. In August 2020, the Republican-controlled United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded in August 2020 that Manafort's ties to individuals connected to Russian intelligence while he was Trump's campaign manager "represented a grave counterintelligence threat" by creating opportunities for "Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump campaign."
On May 13, 2020, Manafort was released to home confinement due to the threat of getting infected with COVID-19. On December 23, 2020, then-U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Manafort.
In mid-March 2024, Manafort reemerged on the political scene, with reports suggesting that he intended to participate in Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. Following Trump's victory at the 2024 United States presidential election, Manafort reportedly cooperated with several individuals from Trump's inner circle (including Tony Fabrizio and Chris LaCivita), as they worked as consultants to the electoral campaign of the former President and Prime Minister of Albania, Sali Berisha's political party, Alliance for a Magnificent Albania, in the 2025 Albanian parliamentary election.
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Early life and education
Paul John Manafort Jr. was born on April 1, 1949, in New Britain, Connecticut. Manafort's parents are Antoinette Mary Manafort (born Cifalu; 1921–2003) and Paul John Manafort Sr. (1923–2013). His grandfather immigrated to the United States from Italy in the early 20th century, settling in Connecticut. He founded the construction company New Britain House Wrecking Company in 1919 (later renamed Manafort Brothers Inc.). His father served in the U.S. Army combat engineers during World War II and served as mayor of New Britain from 1965 to 1971. His father was indicted in a corruption scandal in 1981 but was not convicted.
In 1967, Manafort graduated from St. Thomas Aquinas High School, a private Roman Catholic secondary school, in New Britain. He attended Georgetown University, where he received his B.S. in business administration in 1971 and his J.D. in 1974.
Career
Between 1977 and 1980, Manafort practiced law with the firm of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease in Washington, D.C.
Political activities
In 1976, Manafort served as the delegate-hunt coordinator for eight states for the President Ford Committee; the overall Ford delegate operation was run by James A. Baker III. Between 1978 and 1980, Manafort served as the southern coordinator for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign and the deputy political director at the Republican National Committee. After Reagan's election in November 1980, he was appointed associate director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office. In 1981, he was nominated to the board of directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
Manafort was an adviser to the presidential campaigns of George H. W. Bush in 1988 and Bob Dole in 1996.
In February 2016, Manafort approached Trump through a mutual friend, Thomas J. Barrack Jr. He pointed out his experience advising presidential campaigns in the United States and around the world, described himself as an outsider not connected to the Washington establishment, and offered to work without salary. In March 2016, he joined Trump's presidential campaign to take the lead in getting commitments from convention delegates. On June 20, 2016, Trump fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and promoted Manafort to the position. Manafort gained control of the daily operations of the campaign as well as an expanded $20 million budget, hiring decisions, advertising, and media strategy.
On June 9, 2016, Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner were participants in a meeting with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and several others at Trump Tower. A British music agent, saying he was acting on behalf of Emin Agalarov and the Russian government, had told Trump Jr. that he could obtain damaging information on Hillary Clinton if he met with a lawyer connected to the Kremlin. At first, Trump Jr. said the meeting had been primarily about the Russian ban on international adoptions (in response to the Magnitsky Act) and mentioned nothing about Mrs. Clinton; he later said the offer of information about Clinton had been a pretext to conceal Veselnitskaya's real agenda.
In August 2016, Manafort's connections to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Russian Party of Regions drew national attention in the US, where it was reported that Manafort may have received $12.7 million (~$16.2 million in 2024) in off-the-books funds from the Party of Regions.
Lobbying career
In 1980, Manafort was the founding partner of Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Black, Manafort & Stone, alongside principals Charles R. Black Jr. and Roger Stone. After Peter G. Kelly was recruited, the name of the firm was changed to Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly (BMSK) in 1984.
Manafort left BMSK (then a subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller) in 1995 to join Rick Davis and Matthew C. Freedman in forming Davis, Manafort, and Freedman.
In 1985, Manafort's firm, BMSK, signed a $600,000 (~$1.48 million in 2024) contract with Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA, to refurbish Savimbi's image in Washington and secure financial support on the basis of his anti-communism stance. BMSK arranged for Savimbi to attend events at the American Enterprise Institute (where Jeane Kirkpatrick gave him a laudatory introduction), The Heritage Foundation, and Freedom House; in the wake of the campaign, Congress approved hundreds of millions of dollars in covert American aid to Savimbi's group. Allegedly, Manafort's continuing lobbying efforts helped preserve the flow of money to Savimbi several years after the Soviet Union ceased its involvement in the Angolan conflict, forestalling peace talks.
Between June 1984 and June 1986, Manafort was a FARA-registered lobbyist for Saudi Arabia. The Reagan Administration refused to grant Manafort a waiver from federal statutes prohibiting public officials from acting as foreign agents; Manafort resigned his directorship at OPIC in May 1986. An investigation by the Department of Justice found 18 lobbying-related activities that were not reported in FARA filings, including lobbying on behalf of The Bahamas and Saint Lucia.
Manafort's firm, BMSK, accepted $950,000 yearly to lobby for Ferdinand Marcos, the then-president of the Philippines. Additionally, he was involved in lobbying for Mobutu Sese Seko, the authoritarian President of the Republic of Zaïre (predecessor of today's Democratic Republic of the Congo), securing a US$1 million (~$2.2 million in 2024) annual contract in 1989, while he also attempted to recruit the Somali strongman, Siad Barre, as a client.
His firm lobbied on behalf of the governments of the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, earning between $660,000 and $750,000 each year between 1991 and 1993, and Nigeria, earning $1 million in 1991. These activities resulted in Manafort's firm being listed amongst the top five lobbying firms receiving money from human-rights-abusing regimes in the Center for Public Integrity report "The Torturers' Lobby".
2017 activities
Lobbying for foreign countries requires registration with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Manafort did not do so at the time of his lobbying. In April 2017, a Manafort spokesman said Manafort was planning to file the required paperwork; however, according to Associated Press reporters, as of June 2, 2017, Manafort had not yet registered. On June 27, he filed to be retroactively registered as a foreign agent. Among other things, he disclosed that he made more than $17 million between 2012 and 2014 working for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. The sentencing memorandum submitted by the Office of Special Council on February 23, 2019, stated that the "filing was plainly deficient. Manafort entirely omitted [his] United States lobbying contracts ... and a portion of the substantial compensation Manafort received from Ukraine."
Early in 2017, Manafort supported Chinese efforts at providing development and investment worldwide and in Puerto Rico and Ecuador. Early in 2017, he discussed possible Chinese investment sources for Ecuador with Lenín Moreno who later obtained loans worth several billion US dollars from the China Development Bank. In May 2017, Manafort and Moreno discussed the possibility of Manafort brokering a deal for Ecuador to relinquish Julian Assange to American authorities in exchange for concessions such as debt relief from the United States.
Manafort acted as the go between for the China Development Bank's investment fund to support bailout bonds for Puerto Rico's sovereign debt financing and other infrastructure items. Also, he advised a Shanghai construction billionaire Yan Jiehe (严介和), who owns the Pacific Construction Group (太平洋建设) and is China's seventh richest man with a fortune estimated at $14.2 billion in 2015, on obtaining international contracts.
In mid-2017, Manafort left the United States in order to help organize the 2017 Kurdistan Region independence referendum that was to be held on September 25, 2017, something that surprised both investigators and the media. He was hired by the President of Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani's son Masrour Barzani who heads the Kurdistan Region Security Council. To help Manafort's efforts in supporting Kurdish freedom and independence, his longtime associate Phillip M. Griffin traveled to Erbil prior to the vote. The referendum was not supported by United States Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Manafort returned to the United States just before both his indictment and the start of the 2017 Iraqi–Kurdish conflict in which the Peshmerga-led Kurds lost the Mosul Dam and their main revenue source at the Baba GurGur Kirkuk oilfields to Iraqi forces.
Homes, home loans and other loans
Manafort's work in Ukraine coincided with the purchase of at least four prime pieces of real estate in the United States, worth a combined $11 million, between 2006 and early 2012. In 2006, Manafort purchased an apartment on the 43rd floor of Trump Tower for a reported $3.6 million (~$5.37 million in 2024). Manafort, however, purchased the unit indirectly, through an LLC named after him and his partner Rick Hannah Davis, "John Hannah, LLC." That LLC, according to court documents in Manafort's indictment, came into existence in April 2006, roughly one month after the Ukrainian parliamentary elections that saw Manafort help bring Yanukovych back to power on March 22, 2006. According to Afghan-Ukrainian journalist Mustafa Nayyem, Akhmetov, the Ukrainian oligarch sponsoring Yanukovych, paid the $3 million purchase price for Manafort's Trump Tower apartment for helping win the election. It was not until March 5, 2015, when Manafort's income from Ukraine dwindled, that Manafort would transfer the property out of John Hannah, LLC, and into his own personal name so that he could take out a $3 million loan against the property. The Trump Tower residence was claimed as Manafort's primary residence in order to receive a tax abatement, though Manafort also listed a Florida residence as his primary residence, also to gain tax breaks. The property was since seized by the federal government, and listed for sale in 2019.
Since 2012, Manafort has taken out seven home equity loans worth approximately $19.2 million (~$25.9 million in 2024) on three separate New York-area properties he owns through holding companies registered to him and his then son-in-law Jeffrey Yohai, a real estate investor. In 2016, Yohai declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy for LLCs tied to four residential properties held with the actor Jake Hoffman; Manafort holds a $2.7 million (~$3.45 million in 2024) claim on one of the properties.
As of February 2017, Manafort had about $12 million in home equity loans outstanding. For one home, loans of $6.6 million exceeded the value of that home; the loans are from the Federal Savings Bank of Chicago, Illinois, whose CEO, Stephen Calk, was a campaign supporter of Donald Trump and was a member of Trump's economic advisory council during the campaign. In July 2017, New York prosecutors subpoenaed information about the loans issued to Manafort during the 2016 presidential campaign. At the time, these loans represented about a quarter of the bank's equity capital.
Russia investigations
FBI and Special Counsel investigation
The FBI reportedly began a criminal investigation into Manafort in 2014, shortly after Yanukovych was deposed during Euromaidan. That investigation predated the 2016 election by several years and is ongoing. In addition, Manafort is also a person of interest in the FBI counterintelligence probe looking into the Russian government's interference in the 2016 presidential election.
On January 19, 2017, the eve of Trump's presidential inauguration, it was reported that Manafort was under active investigation by multiple federal agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Director of National Intelligence, and the financial crimes unit of the Treasury Department. Investigations were said to be based on intercepted Russian communications as well as financial transactions. CNN reported in September 2017 that Manafort was wiretapped by the FBI "before and after the election ... including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump." The surveillance of Manafort reportedly began in 2014, before Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President of United States. According to a subsequent CNN editor's note, however: "On December 9, 2019, the Justice Department Inspector General released a report regarding the opening of the investigation on Russian election interference and Donald Trump's campaign. In the report, the IG contradicts what CNN was told in 2017, noting that the FBI team overseeing the investigation did not seek FISA surveillance of Paul Manafort".
Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed on May 17, 2017, by the Justice Department to oversee the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and related matters, took over the existing criminal probe involving Manafort. On July 26, 2017, the day after Manafort's United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing and the morning of his planned hearing before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, FBI agents at Mueller's direction conducted a raid on Manafort's Alexandria, Virginia home, using a search warrant to seize documents and other materials, in regard to the Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Initial press reports indicated Mueller obtained a no-knock warrant for this raid, though Mueller's office has disputed these reports in court documents. United States v. Paul Manafort was analyzed by attorney George T. Conway III, who wrote that it strengthened the constitutionality of the Mueller investigation.
Congressional investigations
In May 2017, in response to a request of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), Manafort submitted over "300 pages of documents ... included drafts of speeches, calendars and notes from his time on the campaign" to the Committee "related to its investigation of Russian election meddling." On July 25, he met privately with the committee.
A congressional hearing on Russia issues, including the Trump campaign-Russian meeting, was scheduled by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary for July 26, 2017. Manafort was scheduled to appear together with Trump Jr., while Kushner was to testify in a separate closed session. After separate negotiations, both Manafort and Trump Jr. met with the committee on July 26 in closed session and agreed to turn over requested documents. They are expected to testify in public eventually.
The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded in its August 2020 final report that as Trump campaign manager "Manafort worked with Kilimnik starting in 2016 on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election" and to direct such suspicions toward Ukraine. The report characterized Kilimnik as a "Russian intelligence officer" and said Manafort's activities represented a "grave counterintelligence threat." The investigation found:Manafort's presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for the Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. The Committee assesses that Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services, and that those services likely sought to exploit Manafort's access to gain insight [into] the Campaign...On numerous occasions over the course of his time of the Trump Campaign, Manafort sought to secretly share internal campaign information with Kilimnik...Manafort briefed Kilimnik on sensitive campaign polling data and the campaign's strategy for beating Hillary Clinton.The Committee did not definitively establish Kilimnik as a channel connected to the hacking and leaking of DNC emails, noting that its investigation was hampered by Manafort and Kilimnik's use of "sophisticated communications security practices" and Manafort's lies during SCO interviews on the topic. The report noted: "Manafort's obfuscation of the truth surrounding Kilimnik was particularly damaging to the Committee's investigation because it effectively foreclosed direct insight into a series of interactions and communications which represent the single most direct tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services." In April 2021, a document released by the U.S. Treasury Department announcing new sanctions against Russia confirmed a direct pipeline from Manafort to Russian intelligence, noting: “During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy”.
Private investigation
The Trump–Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier, is a private intelligence report comprising investigation memos written between June and December 2016 by Christopher Steele. Manafort is a major figure mentioned in the Steele dossier, where allegations are made about Manafort's relationships and actions toward the Trump campaign, Russia, Ukraine, and Viktor Yanukovych. The dossier claims:
that "the Republican candidate's campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT" had "managed" the "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [the Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership," and that he used "foreign policy adviser, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries." (Dossier, p. 7)
that Yanukovych told Putin he had been making untraceable "kick-back payments" to Manafort, who was Trump's campaign manager at the time. (Dossier, p. 20)
Indictments and charges
On October 30, 2017, Manafort was arrested by the FBI after being indicted by a federal grand jury as part of Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign. The indictment against Manafort and Rick Gates charged them with engaging in a conspiracy against the United States, engaging in a conspiracy to launder money, failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts, acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, making false and misleading statements in documents filed and submitted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and making false statements. Prosecutors claimed Manafort laundered more than $18 million (equivalent to $23,642,411 in 2025), money he had received as compensation for lobbying and consulting services for Yanukovych.
Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty to the charges at their court appearance on October 30, 2017. The US government asked the court to set Manafort's bail at $10 million and Gates at $5 million. The court placed Manafort and Gates under house arrest after prosecutors described them as flight risks. If convicted on all charges, Manafort could have faced decades in prison.
Following the hearing, Manafort's attorney Kevin M. Downing made a public statement to the press proclaiming his client's innocence while describing the federal charges stemming from the indictment as "ridiculous". Downing defended Manafort's decade-long lobbying effort for Yanukovych, describing their lucrative partnership as attempts to spread democracy and strengthen the relationship between the United States and Ukraine. Judge Stewart responded by threatening to impose a gag order, saying "I expect counsel to do their talking in this courtroom and in their pleadings and not on the courthouse steps." Revealed on September 13, 2018, Manafort and Donald Trump had signed a joint defense agreement allowing their attorneys to share information during the Mueller investigations and, previously, joint defense agreements had been arranged between Donald Trump and both Michael Cohen and Michael Flynn.
On November 30, 2017, Manafort's attorneys said that Manafort had reached a bail agreement with prosecutors that would free him from the house arrest he had been under since his indictment. He offered bail in the form of $11.65 million worth of real estate. While out on bond, Paul Manafort worked on an op-ed with a "Russian who has ties to the Russian intelligence service", prosecutors said in a court filing requesting that the judge in the case revoke Manafort's bond agreement.
New York State indictment
On March 13, 2019, the same day on which he was sentenced in the Washington case, Manafort was indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney on 16 charges related to mortgage fraud. District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said the charges stemmed from an investigation launched in March 2017. Unlike his previous convictions, these were levied by the State of New York, and therefore, a presidential pardon cannot override or affect the sentence in the event of conviction. In August 2017, NBC News reported that a state investigator was assessing the legal basis for prosecuting potential defendants in the Mueller probe with state crimes, given that pressing such charges could legally provide an end run around any presidential pardons.
On December 18, 2019, Justice Maxwell Wiley of the New York Supreme Court, Criminal Term, New York County, dismissed the charges against Manafort. On August 20, 2020, the New York County District Attorney's Office appealed the dismissal to the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division. In October 2020, a panel of the Appellate Division unanimously upheld the dismissal.
Despite Manafort being pardoned in December 2020 for his federal crimes, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office announced it would nevertheless continue to pursue state charges. However, on February 4, 2021, the New York Court of Appeals declined to hear the Manhattan District Attorney's appeal.
Trials
The numerous indictments against Manafort were divided into two trials.
Eastern District of Virginia
Manafort was tried in the Eastern District of Virginia on eighteen charges, including tax evasion, bank fraud, and hiding foreign bank accounts - financial crimes uncovered during the special counsel's investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 election. The trial began on July 31, 2018, before U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis III. On August 21, the jury found Manafort guilty on eight of the eighteen charges, while Ellis declared a mistrial on the other ten. He was convicted on five counts of tax fraud, one of the four counts of failing to disclose his foreign bank accounts, and two counts of bank fraud.
The jury was hung on three of the four counts of failing to disclose, as well as five counts of bank fraud, four of which were related to the Federal Savings Bank of Chicago run by Stephen Calk. Mueller's office advised the court that Manafort should receive a sentence of 20 to 24 years, a sentence consistent with federal guidelines, but on March 7, 2019, Ellis sentenced Manafort to just 47 months in prison, less nine months for time already served, adding that the recommended sentence was "excessive" and that Manafort had lived an "otherwise blameless life." However, Ellis noted that Manafort had not expressed "regret for engaging in wrongful conduct".
District of Columbia
Manafort's trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was scheduled to begin in September 2018. He was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, money laundering, failing to register as a foreign lobbyist, making false statements to investigators, and witness tampering. On September 14, 2018, Manafort entered into a plea deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to two charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering. He also agreed to forfeit to the government cash and property with a combined worth estimated between $11 and $26 million, and to cooperate fully with the Special Counsel. A tentative sentencing date for Manafort's guilty plea in the D.C. case has been set for March 2019.
Mueller's office stated in a November 26, 2018, court filing that Manafort had repeatedly lied to prosecutors about a variety of matters, breaching the terms of his plea agreement. Manafort's attorneys disputed the assertion. On December 7, 2018, the special counsel's office filed a document with the court, listing five areas in which they claimed Manafort has lied to them, which they stated negated the plea agreement. DC District Court judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled on February 13, 2019, that Manafort had violated his plea deal by repeatedly lying to prosecutors.
In a February 7, 2019, hearing before U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amy Berman Jackson, prosecutors speculated that Manafort had concealed facts about his activities to enhance the possibility of his receiving a pardon. They said that Manafort's work with Ukraine had continued after he had made his plea deal and that during the Trump campaign, he met with his campaign deputy, Rick Gates, who also had pleaded guilty in the case, and with alleged Russian Federation intelligence agent, Konstantin Kilimnik, in an exclusive New York cigar bar. Gates said the three left the premises separately, each using different exits.
On March 13, 2019, Jackson sentenced Manafort to 73 months in prison, with 30 months concurrent with the jail time he received in the Virginia case, for a resultant sentence of an additional 43 months in jail (30 additional months for conspiracy to defraud the United States and 13 additional months for witness tampering). Manafort also apologized for his actions.
Prison sentence
Manafort was jailed from June 2018 until May 2020. During that time, he was briefly held at the United States Penitentiary Canaan in Waymart, Pennsylvania. He was held at Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto in Loretto, Pennsylvania (inmate #35207-016). In June 2019, he was moved to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York in Manhattan. In August 2019, he was moved back to the Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto, Pennsylvania, with an expected release date of December 25, 2024. On May 13, 2020, Manafort was released to home confinement over COVID-19 concerns. On December 23, 2020, Trump issued Manafort a full pardon.
As part of his pardon, some of his forfeitures were unwound. He was able to retain his large house in Water Mill, New York, his brownstone in Brooklyn, his apartment on the edge of Manhattan's Chinatown, and assets seized in an account at Federal Savings Bank. He did not retain assets that were already forfeited and sold, such as an apartment in Trump Tower in Manhattan, a bank account, and a life insurance policy.
Law licenses
In 2017, Massachusetts lawyer J. Whitfield Larrabee filed a misconduct complaint against Manafort in the Connecticut Statewide Grievance Committee, seeking his disbarment on the basis of "conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation." In 2018, after Manafort pleaded guilty to conspiracy, the Connecticut Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel brought a case against Manafort. In January 2019, ahead of a disbarment hearing, Manafort resigned from the Connecticut bar and waived his right to ever seek readmission.
Manafort was disbarred from the DC Bar on May 9, 2019.
Personal life
Manafort has been married to Kathleen Bond Manafort since August 12, 1978. They have two daughters, including Jessica.
