Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced

By Paul Manafort

A WALL STREET JOURNAL, USA TODAY, and PUBLISHERS WEEKLY NATIONAL BESTSELLER

NEW BOOK CLAIMS DONALD TRUMP WILL RUN AND WIN IN 2024!

A riveting account of the HOAX that sent a presidential campaign chairman to solitary confinement because he wouldn’t turn against the President of the United States.
 
The chief weapon deployed by the government-corporate-media Establishment against the Trump presidency was propaganda. Time and again, allegations from anonymous sources were disseminated by a partisan media, promoted by a dishonest Democrat Party leadership, and ultimately debunked when the facts surfaced. But by the time the truth came out, it was too late. There had already been casualties. 
 
One of the highest profile casualties was Paul Manafort.
 
Desperate to defeat Donald Trump—or hamper his presidency after he won—Democrats and their Establishment allies colluded with foreign operatives to concoct a completely false narrative about Paul’s supposed conspiracy with pro-Russian elements in Ukraine to further Vladimir Putin’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. But it wasn’t just defamation of Paul’s character. They took the unprecedented step of enlisting the US intelligence and law enforcement communities in using their power against President Trump and his campaign team.
 
Political Prisoner finally exposes the lies left unchallenged by media who pronounced Paul guilty long before his case ever saw the inside of a courtroom. Not only is it untrue that Victor Yanukovych or any of Paul’s clients were “pro-Putin,” it is the opposite of the truth. Paul’s work in Ukraine and throughout his career was 100 percent aligned with US interests in the countries he worked in, sometimes even acting as a back channel for the White House itself.
 
Neither was Paul guilty of laundering money, evading taxes, or deliberately deceiving the US government by failing to register as a foreign agent—which he wasn’t. These were all politically motivated charges manufactured by the Special Counsel’s team for one reason and one reason only: to get Paul to testify against Donald Trump about a conspiracy that never existed. When they hear the basis of these spurious charges, Americans will wonder what country they are living in and what has happened to our system of justice.
 
Political Prisoner tells the real story of Paul’s life and career, exploding the lies about his work in Ukraine, his previous work with foreign governments and business interests in other countries, his involvement with the Trump campaign, and the “process crimes” for which he was wrongly convicted and sent to prison. It is no exaggeration to say that everything most Americans think they know about Paul Manafort is false.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Release date: Aug 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781510772434

Book preview

Introduction

It took almost two hundred years from the election of Andrew Jackson for another outsider as dedicated to the destruction and reconstruction of the Washington establishment to be elected president of the United States. The election of Donald J. Trump—sent to DC with the mission of draining the swamp—was a day of celebration for the silent majority, the basket of deplorables, the working class, the non-elites. Finally, they had a champion who they were convinced would not forget them after the election.

To Washington, however, and the power establishment of Government, Big Media, Big Tech, and Wall Street, it was the most threatening development in the history of modern America. They never saw it coming and were at a loss for why it happened. The very reason that Trump was successful was the blind spot that kept the establishment from understanding his appeal. The elites on the two coasts believed they knew what was best for the country. They also believed a populist loudmouth could be ignored. But when Donald Trump won the election on November 8, 2016, neither he nor the people who elected him could be ignored any longer.

It was not just losing control of their power that scared the swamp. Scariest of all to them was the fact that they knew that the secret of their all-encompassing violations of Americans’ constitutional rights was about to be exposed in all of its ugliness and illegalities.

The system did what it has always done when challenged—it doubled down on everything: On illegal surveillance on our private lives. On abuse of our first amendment freedom of speech. On violations of our freedom of assembly. On our right to a fair trial. On the weaponization of the law enforcement and national security apparatus to target Americans and create crimes that they knew did not exist.

In the course of figuring out how to destroy the intruder, the cabal threw truth out of their vocabulary. Living in the US became a political version of the Alice in Wonderland view of reality. The truth became whatever lies would promote their narrative. And the Twitter universe and fake social media platforms threatened to destroy the mainstream media (MSM) if it did not come along. It was the perfect storm because the elites had taken over the mainstream news outlets. Journalistic ethics were turned upside down. Social media, identity media, and MSM reporting became one.

I saw this early in the 2016 campaign when the New York Times published a front-page story on August 7, 2016, by one of its reporters, Jim Rutenburg.¹ I had to reread the story because I could not believe the New York Times could countenance such an approach to journalism. Rutenberg, citing his elite status and his egomaniacal view that he knew what was best for our country, announced that because (in his view) Trump is a demagogue playing to the nations’ worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, Rutenberg and all reputable journalists must throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half century. It was the duty of American journalists to become partisans, to forget objectivity, and to exposing the evil of Trump and his supporters.

While this was a complete dismissal of journalism’s ethics, it was late to the game because the social media wannabe journalists had already made that leap. To the social media reporters, who cared more about using identity media to drive their audiences, exploitation of narratives based on partisanship was the coin of the realm. Facts gave way to diatribe. Twitter revolved around hate, abuse, and fake news. Retweets were the goal, not honest reporting. And if the MSM did not follow the lead of these Potemkin social media reporters, this vitriol would be turned against them. The threat was unnecessary. The MSM reporters, editors, and publishers fell right into line.

Emotion drove the news. The more outrageous the better:

Paul Manafort is a traitor. Paul Manafort is dealing directly with Putin and the Kremlin. Paul Manafort is evil.

These were accusations thrown out not by trashy tabloids, but mainstream staples such as CNN and MSNBC.

The headlines attracted viewers. Truth be damned. It was entertaining and great chatter for the elites at cocktail parties. Plus, it made them feel good about themselves.

And worse, when a truth somehow got through the morass of lies and hate, it was ignored. Journalists no longer knew the meaning of I was wrong or I made a mistake. Hillary Clinton’s collusion with Russians and Ukrainians to take down Trump was ignored. It continues to be ignored today even after Special Counsel John Durham has filed the facts exposing these crimes and hypocrisies. They go unreported.

Not one of the many Pulitzer Prizes awarded for incorrect reporting on the collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was ever returned. I am certain that if he were alive today, Joseph Pulitzer would have revoked the use of his name for these wrongly given acknowledgements.

The journalists were bad, but politicians like Adam Schiff were even more deceptive in their lies. Citing information that he said he had seen as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, but really never existed, Schiff boldly lied to the American people and got away with it.

The Senate Intelligence Committee wrote a 1,300-page report in which they repeated unconfirmed stories about me and Russian collusion based on inference and innuendo. The Committee, throughout the section of the report on me, even admits they have either little or no information on any of their conclusions about me. This did not keep them from leaping to such outrageous findings that I attended meetings that never occurred, passed polling data that they have no evidence of, supported a peace plan for Ukraine that they had evidence I rejected, and so on.

In this book, I will get into the details of these matters, but the tragedy is that I even have to do so.

No one—not the OSC (Office of Special Council), the Senate or House Intelligence Committees, the hundreds if not thousands of journalists who investigated me looking for links—found even one smoking gun, never mind a bullet. Yet, in today’s Court of Public Opinion I am guilty, guilty, guilty of being pro-Russian.

To reach this conclusion, the body of work I did over thirty-five years must be totally ignored. My work for various governments and political parties that opposed the Soviet Union and later Russia were either ignored or misrepresented, despite the public news stories of my work at the time. Again, I was caught in the twilight of the perfect storm of media and the Washington swamp motivated by the Anti-Trump jihad.

This is why I am writing this book. I want to get the truth into the public domain. I don’t expect to persuade those who don’t care about facts or the truth or a lifetime of work. I do believe that any serious student of history can analyze my work and see that the hysteria of Russian collusion blinded the public from the truth.

I want people to understand who I really am. I want to tell the truth. I want to tell the real story. And I want people to understand some of the fears I have about the excesses that are destroying our way of life in America. That is of paramount importance to me.

As I started to emerge in the last year—to go to events and to get involved again—people would come up to me and say, You need to write a book. I realized that what they needed was not just about me—it’s about something bigger than me. They understood the system was broken and feared for their country. They were asking for hope. My story is one filled with danger, but I do believe that in exposing the real truth, there can be hope if we don’t give up our quest to drain the swamp. I was persuaded—I needed to tell my story.

Our government is broken. The guardians at our gates protecting our freedom, privacy, and humanity have disappeared. The last four years have opened my eyes. If these cracks are not fixed, they will bring our country into such a decline that we will no longer be what Ronald Reagan so lovingly called that shining city on the hill.

I also believe it is important to raise some of the serious issues that are encompassed in the history of the last six years—illegal government surveillance; the weaponization of our law enforcement, legal, and national security departments and agencies; the deliberate targeting of Americans based on their political affiliations in the US; a prosecution system that cares more about getting a conviction than getting the truth; a prison system that does not work or even care to work; and a media that only cares about identity media and promoting themselves at the expense of the truth.

These are issues that need to be understood. My journey touches on all of them. What I found time and time again was people using their power in abusive ways to settle their own scores or to acquire more power. Rogue prosecutors and power-drunk Judges used their platforms to trample on our rights, not protect them. Prison officials used their authority to ensure that inmates felt bad about themselves and learned little that could help them re-enter society. And politicians were so hypocritical that they would change their position on every important fundamental right that our Constitution protects, just to keep power.

My case, by the intentional design of the prosecutors and the Office of Special Counsel, was very complicated—overly complicated. They had me on charges of everything from bank fraud and failure to file under the Foreign Agents Registration Act to tax evasion, money laundering, and obstruction of justice. None of it was true. Of note is that every charge brought by the Special Counsel had been reviewed by the US Government in the past. And in each situation, without the glare of media neon lights flashing, assessed the evidence as not worthy of pursuing. In other words, not guilty of criminal behavior.

The reason the Special Counsel made it so complicated was because of one very simple fact: there was no Russian collusion. Instead of admitting that, they determined to make my life miserable for as long as they could. They used all sorts of unethical tactics to make it happen and they came close to destroying me. At the end of the day, all of it was created in an effort to break me, to get me to give them what they wanted on Trump. I never did. I could not have.

There was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was, however, collusion between the Clinton campaign and foreign governments. I will lay out the hypocrisy of the MSM and the establishment in ignoring the real collusion because they only cared about bringing down Donald Trump and protecting their control over the levers of power. The truth did not matter, especially the inconvenient truths. Their self-defined ends justified any means they chose to use, regardless of legality or ethics.

My story is not unique, but my public image is uniquely centered in these issues. Ordinary Americans are suffering similar abuses—you just don’t read about them. I hope this book will cause some reflection and introspection. I don’t expect this reaction in Washington. They are locked into their now-discredited narrative. But I do hope that ordinary Americans, the people who sent Donald Trump to drain the swamp, will reflect and think about where they are at risk.

I do not have solutions for all these problems. Everything is rationalized by the moment. But I believe that you can change things and change events. Awareness is very important, and resolve is vital. Unfortunately, the fascist Left/Woke crowd is willing to use even violence on their political enemies, including threats to the family members of active conservative leaders. There is no longer a Sherriff in the Democratic Party. Hypocrisy rules and seeking power justifies any means to get to a desired end.

Barbarians at the Gate could have been the title of this book, but it was already taken. Political Prisoner works too. Yes, I was a political prisoner, but so is every American citizen if we don’t reform our system and get back to protecting the rights of all Americans no matter who we are.

CHAPTER 1

The Defendant Will Be Detained

Up until the very last moment, I still didn’t believe it could happen—not to me and not like this. Not in a court of law in the United States of America.

The hearing that day, June 15, 2018, was initially scheduled to deal with my bail package, which had languished since my indictment on October 30, 2017. However, just prior to this court date, the Office of Special Counsel announced that it was filing superseding charges claiming that I had obstructed justice and attempted to tamper with potential trial witnesses. This was a ploy to keep the pressure on me. Realizing that their strategy of keeping me in home confinement was nearing an end, they had changed their tactics and come up with an obstruction charge. Now, preposterously, because of this trumped-up charge, the prosecutors were demanding that I be incarcerated—immediately.

Despite the assumed unlikelihood of a bad outcome, I had a bad feeling that morning, an intuition that things might not go my way. When the arguments finished, and the liberal, Obama-appointed presiding judge, Amy Berman Jackson, said that she wanted to recess to her chambers before rendering her decision, that feeling only intensified. As she departed, I looked to my wife Kathy who was sitting in the first row of the gallery. For the first time, I could see the fear in her face. She knew it, too. She sensed the same thing I did. And it made me want to cry. I could handle my fear, but my heart broke for my wife. She had been by my side, stalwart from the beginning. She knew who I was and had never once doubted me. What she worried about was the kangaroo court that was unfolding before our eyes.

The charade became more apparent when Judge Jackson returned to the court after only a very brief recess. When she placed what looked like a several-page document in front of her, I knew I was going to jail.

Jackson began to read without looking at me. Her words could have been written by the Mueller legal team. She simply repeated their arguments.

In disbelief, I leaned over to my attorney, Kevin Downing, and whispered, She is sending me to jail. Kevin told me to be quiet and listen, but I didn’t need to hear any more. My eyes wandered away from the bench toward the prosecution sitting across from me. Andrew Weissman, the lead prosecutor, and his team sat at their table, fawning over Jackson’s embrace of their exact thoughts and words. Staring at them in the courtroom, I thought to myself, You know these accusations are not true. How could you find satisfaction in destroying a man’s life, in harming his family?

At this point, the judge was summing up her prepared opinion. Finally, she looked at me with a smug, false remorse and dropped her axe.

And so all of this, at bottom, affects my judgment about whether you can be trusted to comply with the Court’s directives, she said. And that is the finding that the statute also requires me to make if I release you, and I can’t make it. You have abused the trust placed in you six months ago. And, therefore, the government’s motion will be granted. And the defendant will be detained pending trial as of today.

. . . And the defendant will be detained pending trial as of today.

Hearing those words, I felt my face turn white. And just like that, the session was over. It was surreal—a nightmare. Jackson made some perfunctory remarks on scheduling. The two legal teams made some administrative comments. To them it was all business as usual. But not to me. To me, it was my life. My world had stopped. I was no longer in control of anything. I could no longer hold my wife and kids. Despite my intuition that things would not go well that day, this was a new reality for which I was not really prepared.

Suddenly, my mind was racing. I felt fear. I felt numb. It was nearly impossible to wrap my head around what was happening. I worried for my family. I didn’t know where I would be sent. The DC jail was notorious for its violence, but I didn’t think there were any federal prisons in the area. So, the DC jail was the most likely place. But so much—everything—felt out of my hands. Fear gripped me, but even then, I knew I could not show it. I knew my fear would scare my wife. Plus, I did not want to give Weissman and his team the satisfaction.

The marshal came to me at my table and said I had to go with him. I looked at Kevin, who was clearly in shock and possibly even more confused than I was. Not knowing what was behind the door, I told Kevin to follow me into the next room.

As I was leaving the courtroom, I knew I had to make eye contact with Kathy. I turned to the audience and saw her looking at me. I could see the concern on her face, and I knew that I needed to look brave, to let her know—even without the ability to say anything—that I could handle this situation. But inside I was a mess. I felt like vomiting. With as much strength as I could, I smiled at her from across the room and she threw me a kiss. That kiss stayed with me. I felt it on my lips, and it gave me strength in the moment and in the days to come.

The marshal took me to a cell block off the side of the court where I was instructed to give him all of my valuables, my belt, and my tie, which I did. (I also gave them my suit jacket, which was returned to me. I don’t know why I gave it up, but it just seemed like the right thing to do.) The reality of my situation—of all the unknowns so suddenly piling on top of me—started to sink in.

A few minutes later, Kevin came through the door. I gathered that he was not allowed into the area but somehow, he had managed.

You’ve got to get me put in a safe environment. I can’t be put into the DC prison system, I said. Truthfully, I didn’t know anything about DC prisons beyond their terrible reputation. I had all of these preconceived ideas of what jail was and, in that moment, all of the worst things I could think of were running through my head.

Kevin told me that they were going back to the office to deal with this crisis. He assured me that I would be safe. With so little else to hold on to at that point, I took comfort in his words even if I had no reason to believe them. I tried to calm down. I thought, I’ve got to pull myself together. I can’t lose it. I’ve got to figure things out. And I can’t show fear. I cannot let them think that this tactic they’re using—one of intimidation, pressure, and bullying—is working. I saw myself sitting on this small bench in this cavernous cell. I resolved to appear indifferent to what was happening to me. It didn’t matter that I had a thousand thoughts in my head or that my stomach was in turmoil. I wouldn’t let them break me.

After forty-five minutes, I was taken to the jail area in the basement of the DC courthouse where I was put into a large cell that could hold groups of prisoners. I was alone. There was just one long bench across the back with a metal toilet. After another half hour a guard came over and asked if I had eaten anything. It was the first time I had even thought about food. It was also the first of many lunches I’d eat from a paper bag filled with a baloney and cheese sandwich on white bread, an apple, and a juice box.

Once I was locked in the cell, no one spoke to me. In handcuffs and leg-cuffs, I realized I was in the same area during the arraignment back in October. Recognizing the cell—a familiar environment—brought me some morbid comfort. There was one key difference: in October, I knew that I would be out of the jail as soon as the arraignment was over in an hour. This time I had no idea how long I was in for—or if I’d ever get out.

There were no clocks (there are no clocks anywhere in jail), so I didn’t know what time it was, how long I’d be there, what was happening on the outside, where I would be going, or if Kevin or my family even knew where I was anymore. I started to hyperventilate. Once again, I attempted to regain control of my anxiety, now spiraling dangerously out of control. I had to focus myself. I tried practicing a number of mindfulness exercises that I had learned over the past year of my ordeal. I sat on the edge of the metal bench and focused on the only object in the cell—the toilet. I tried to lose myself in the moment and, with some effort, I succeeded.

Finally, after what felt like many hours, three prison guards ushered me from the cell into a large van. It was only when I walked outside that I realized it was dark. No one told me where the van was going. I had to shuffle because I had handcuffs on my wrists and shackles on my legs. As the door was opened to the van, I saw three rows of seats behind a metal screen divider. I sat in the first row, closest to the door. In the van with me were five other prisoners, all dressed in prison garb. I was still in my suit jacket and white shirt.

As we pulled away from the underground area, I closed my eyes, prayed for strength, and felt a surge of adrenaline. I still had no idea where I was going, but I had to remain strong. The adrenaline evaporated as I looked beyond the wired windows at the darkness outside. I almost passed out—from nerves, exhaustion, stress—but caught myself. Again I told myself to pull it together. I needed to be in control. I knew that I had never solved anything by panicking.

A prisoner from the far back corner of the van introduced himself as B. B. He called me Professor. Why, I don’t know. Maybe it was the suit jacket I was still wearing. Either way, I took it as a sign of respect.

After welcoming me, he told me that he was arrested for selling drugs and having an illegal gun. The situation felt so absurd, I couldn’t help but smile to myself. The other prisoners ignored him, but I took the opportunity to ask him where we were going.

Northern Neck Regional Jail, he said. Northern Neck was somewhere in the Chesapeake area, about a hundred miles from DC. I didn’t know why I was being taken so far away. But at least I knew I wouldn’t be in a DC jail, which brought some small measure of relief.

B. B. told me Northern Neck was a cool jail. He said there was good stuff to do there if you are in general population, or GP. In GP, he said, you could hang out, watch TV, do some exercising. This was all good cuz ya don’ wanna be in your cell all day. I asked him how many beds were in a cell and he told me two to four. When I asked him if he was in a two- or four-bed cell, he said he was not going to be in either. He was going to the hole—solitary confinement. I shuddered at the image but dismissed it without thinking. The hole, I thought, was for hardened criminals, dangerous inmates, prisoners of special distinction. In the hole, B. B. told me, you are alone, with no access to people or any of the activities of the jail. Prisoners in this type of confinement are allowed one hour of recreation time a week. He assured me I wouldn’t be in solitary because it was only for those who could not be trusted to exist in the general population.

Eventually, after giving me a virtual tour of the jail I was going to, B. B. asked me what I’d been arrested for. He had no idea who I was. No one knew who I was. I was just another prisoner on his way to Northern Neck.

For something I didn’t do, I told him. I was set up. ‘Business crimes.’

"We all set up by the man!" he said.

He was 100 percent right. I had been set up by the man—the Office of Special Counsel, Weissman, Mueller, Hillary, Obama, the MSM. The list went on.

After about an hour of talking, B. B. went quiet. We didn’t speak for the rest of the trip. I didn’t want to push him, even though there was so much I still didn’t know. And I didn’t want to upset the other prisoners. There were protocols in this system that I needed to learn. That much was clear. But the conversation gave me comfort. For the first time on that terrible day, I had some sense of what to expect. In the quiet darkness of the van, my mind still raced with unanswered questions. Would I be in a two- or four-bed cell? Who were my cellmates? How would I get along with the other inmates in GP? How would I contact my family to let them know I was okay? Do they have any idea where I am?

Eventually, these thoughts dissolved into prayer. I prayed for strength. I prayed for my family, and I prayed for a quick resolution of this nightmare that had become my life.

The van drove south on I-95 toward Richmond. It was Friday night. Eventually, we got off of I-95 and on to some side roads. As we crossed a long bridge, I thought I knew where we were, but I was wrong. I could recognize from the signs that we were heading toward the Chesapeake area. I just didn’t know where.

We pulled into a jail courtyard after three or four hours of driving. Seeing the sign—Northern Neck Regional Center (NNRC)—triggered a fresh wave of anxiety. I was met by a short security woman who immediately whisked me away from the other prisoners—an unsettling sign of how I was to spend the next twelve months. But the woman was soft-spoken, very caring, and she put me at ease.

She introduced herself as Sergeant Kelly and told me that the warden had called her at home and asked her to meet me upon arrival to process me. Sensing my fear, she told me to try to stay calm.

Prison is tough, she assured me, but we will make it a little better for you.

Her compassion in those early moments was as unexpected as it was appreciated. She brought me directly to my cell—a windowless concrete box ten feet long by eight feet wide. It had a ten-inch TV, one bunk bed, a metal shower, a sink, a toilet, and a phone that did not work. With a noticeable hint of pride in her voice, Sergeant Kelly told me I would be in the VIP cell.

Looking around the room, I examined the door and the horror hit me again. It was solid metal, with a small slot for food trays and a small window that was covered by a hinged metal cover on the outside. Unless the window was opened, the door was solid with no view of the other side. I’ve suffered from claustrophobia throughout my life and the cell seemed to be designed to break me.

According to Kelly, I would be treated a little differently from the rest of the prisoners. I would not be booked, so there would be no mug shot that could leak out. I would wear regular clothes, not a prison jumpsuit. The catch, however, was that I would be in solitary confinement—the VIP cell, or hole, as B. B. had put it. This, she explained, was to keep me from having any contact with any of the prisoners for my safety. I laughed.

For my safety, I could not be moved anywhere in the prison without a team of deputies clearing the hallways first. For my safety, I could not speak to any of the other inmates. For my safety, I could not have access to the gym or to any of the common facilities like the rec room or the cafeteria. I could not look outside of my cell without the metal window being opened from the outside by a prison guard.

For my safety would become the Bureau of Prison’s go-to explanation of my situation as I languished in solitary confinement for the next year. Weissman was not interested in my safety. He was only interested in making my life so miserable that I would gladly offer to cooperate to get out of that hellhole.

I sensed immediately—and correctly—that my solitary confinement had less to do with my protection and more to do with the Special Counsel’s high-pressure tactics, but on this first day in captivity it was too disorienting for me to assess clearly.

Acutely aware of how I was feeling, Sgt. Kelly asked me if I wanted to call my family. Because I had arrived on Friday night, she said, they had not yet activated the phone in my room. She told me to follow her to her office and she’d let me call from her phone. Not the way the regs said it should be done, but she was putting me ahead of the rules.

The first call I made was to Kathy. I needed to let her and my daughter know that I was okay. I knew they would be worried. They were completely in the dark. I wanted to tell Kathy that I was scared but as soon as the call connected, I realized I had to tell her I was better than I really was. Any sense of panic on my end would be unbearable to her. So, for the second time this day, I put on a brave face for her. It was beyond emotional to hear the voices of Kathy and my daughter, but I did what I could to hold myself together, to reassure them of my safety, and to let them know that I was in control of the situation. I know I gave both her and my daughter Andrea comfort, but I ached inside. I explained where I was and gave them the name of the prison. At this time, no one, including my attorneys, knew where I had been taken.

While I was speaking to Kathy, my daughter went online to the NNRC website and looked up all of the information on the facility, including how to set up an account for me to access the commissary, have a phone account to place calls (no money is allowed in the jail), and register me for an iPad/cell phone that allowed me to have phone access in my cell for most of the day and night.

By the time I was finished speaking with Kathy, Andrea had everything set up. She was incredible! It gave me comfort knowing that I would be connected to my family while at NNRC, but I needed to be patient. Nothing was going to be activated until Monday.

Saying goodbye was very difficult. But the truth is that the call had a calming effect on me. I was nowhere near as calm as I pretended to be, but I was clearly in a better frame of mind.

Next, I called my lawyer, Kevin Downing, to set up a meeting to figure things out. To my dismay, he told me he was leaving for Tel Aviv the next day for a trip that had already been postponed when the government filed the witness tampering charges. The timing upset me, but he promised to send another attorney down on Monday to start building our plan. We had to figure out how we would work together to prepare my case. I was very concerned about how we would work now that I was four hours away, in prison, and without access to any of my files. The case was complex, and we needed to collaborate in real time. I had no idea how this could happen and needed to confer with my legal team. Kevin’s trip to Israel now made things even more confusing.

While the call to my family steadied my heart and calmed my nerves, the conversation with Kevin focused my mind. For the first time since the judge sent me back to that cell in the courthouse, I could feel myself building a plan, something I’ve always done, and done well—something I needed to do to hold myself together. Over the course of my life, no matter what environment I have found myself in, I have always used my skills and my instincts to get the job done. It was second nature and it felt good, despite everything, to attempt to assert some degree of control over my situation.

Still, my situation was serious, and any feelings of tranquility or clarity were short lived that night. I was in jail—in the hole—for something I didn’t do, and the Special Counsel’s abuses of power were just beginning. The unthinkable was happening.

I recalled how when I’d left my condo for court that morning, there were two thoughts running through my head. One was of the liberation I’d feel if my bail was finally approved. My lawyer was sure of this outcome. I was confident, too, to some degree, but still apprehensive. And the other was the possibility—horrifying as it was—of home confinement for the duration of the trial, still five months away. Being sent to prison was, of course, a possibility, but it was considered extremely unlikely. I was neither a flight risk nor a threat to the community. I had no criminal past, and I wasn’t some dangerous villain like John Gotti, Bernie Madoff, or Bill Cosby.

But to understand what happened—and I was only beginning to see the full picture, myself—it is important to understand that the bail package issue was never just about a negotiation between me and the Special Counsel. It was the opening salvo in the fight to define the stakes of this case. Beyond the narrow legal issues, the Special Counsel had built up the importance of my case to exposing the conspiracy between the Trump presidential campaign and President Vladimir Putin of Russia. I was the key, and they would twist the hell out of me to get what they wanted.

From the moment Andrew Weissman was hand-picked by Robert Mueller to lead the investigation into Russian collusion and the Trump campaign, the ends were always going to justify his means. Eight and a half months prior to my incarceration, at my initial arraignment, Weissman had effectively established the magnitude of my indictment and my case’s central role in establishing the Russia-Trump conspiracy. The fact that the conspiracy was a politically motivated fabrication and that I was being indicted on statutory violations that were never before cited in criminal indictments was totally irrelevant. In other words, the fact that I was innocent didn’t matter.

To that end, on the day I was arrested, October 30, 2017, the DC Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson imposed an unheard of $10 million bail package on me, effectively making my case the most important legal case in the country. My legal team assured me not to worry. This was an absurd bail amount, they said, and when I appeared before the US District Court judge, who would manage my case, this amount would be reduced to a more normal bond, somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million.

But, as I knew from my own career, in politics it’s crucial to frame the narrative at the earliest possible time. Just as Weissman knew it would, the $10 million bail number reverberated throughout the political and legal system. The mainstream media decided—before a single fact was ever established—that the $10 million bail meant that I was a major criminal who must have done some very bad things. Why else would the bail be set so high? Between the bail package and the initial charges filed against me centering on my consulting for a foreign government (Ukraine) that was once a part of the Soviet Union, in the minds of the media, the dots connected themselves: Russia. Manafort. Trump. Collusion. The conspiracy narrative exploded—just as Weissman and the Magistrate Judge knew it would—and I was at the center of it, my guilt a foregone conclusion from the moment of my arrest.

Contrary to what my lawyers believed, when the time came, the District Court Judge, Amy Berman Jackson, did not reduce the $10 million bail amount. Jackson was a liberal Democrat who had ambitions to seek higher appointment in the judicial system. As the presiding judge in the trial of President Donald Trump’s Campaign Chairman, she now had the perfect platform to audition for future consideration by a Democrat president. Jackson embraced the Special Prosecutor’s theory that I was such a flight risk and that the court needed to impose this unprecedented bail amount on me. She acceded to the $10 million amount and remanded me to my home to figure out how to come up with $10 million of unencumbered assets to be allowed to leave my condo.

While I do not know what she knew about my financial situation, I do know that Weissman and the prosecutors knew that this would be a very difficult task for me to accomplish. Any ideas I might have had about receiving fair treatment were swiftly and strongly trampled. I would be used by the Special Counsel and the judicial system to bring down my old boss, President Donald Trump, by any means necessary.

In the months between my initial arraignment on October 31 and the June 15 bail hearing, my legal team presented Judge Jackson with three different bail packages, all of which were rejected. But the fourth package, cobbled together from various approved portions of the three previous proposals, would have to be approved, and Weissman knew it. So in the week before my Friday bail hearing, a story was leaked to the press that I had attempted to obstruct justice by tampering with potential witnesses for my upcoming trial. Based on this obstruction, Weissman would argue that the Special Counsel could no longer support me being given bail. They were demanding that I be immediately incarcerated because I was now a threat to the community.

The tactics Weissman used—of feeding the allegations to the MSM, Judge Jackson, and the Grand Jury—were characteristic of the way he worked. The approach would center around an unnamed government official leaking damning information asserting that I had done something nefarious, then using those stories to go to the Grand Jury.

The intended effect of these stories was to poison the mind of Judge Jackson regarding my violating her rules. Weissman wanted her to feel that I had disrespected her personally and the court administratively. In doing so, he was confident that he could successfully argue that I did not deserve to be on the street and could not be trusted to obey any future admonishments of the Judge.

Ironically, Jackson had never issued any order limiting me from communicating with potential witnesses. In fact, despite our repeated requests for several months, Weissman had refused to even provide us with a list of possible witnesses. So, even if I had done what Weissman was alleging, I would not have violated her instructions to me. But this was immaterial to Weissman’s strategy. He wanted to influence the emotional atmosphere of the court.

The obstruction accusations were preposterous. They centered on an attempted call by me on February 23, 2018, to one of my consultant team members, who had worked with me for several years in Ukraine. Downing was confident going into the June 15 hearing because he did not believe that the Special Counsel could make a serious enough case. Even in a Russian court, Downing joked to me in the car that morning, the Judge wouldn’t dare to throw you in jail on these facts. He didn’t believe I would have my bail denied on the flimsy evidence presented by the Special Counsel, never mind be incarcerated.

I wanted to believe him. But in the back of my mind, I was nervous. Something wasn’t sitting right. Over the course of a career in politics, I’ve developed a certain instinct and I did not trust Jackson. Plus, my confidence in historical legal precedent was flagging. I had grown weary of having trial lawyers tell me they can’t believe this is happening. It never happens.

I have been a success in my political and business career because I never take any outcome for granted. I have always factored a worst-case and best-case scenario. In preparation for this hearing that is exactly what I did.

Fearing the worst outcome, I organized my personal affairs in a way that my wife and family could manage the priorities of my life. Even in undertaking this course, however, I never believed that I would remain in prison for any length of time. Unfortunately, my family did not want to even imagine this possibility, so their attention was not very focused. Nonetheless, I comforted myself in the knowledge that I had organized my affairs and informed my family on what they needed to replace me.

As Jackson opened up the hearing with her summary of the business of the day, she never looked at me. I did not view this as a positive sign.

Next the Special Counsel presented the opening arguments on the issue of why I should be denied bail. They ignored the package that I had submitted. Instead, they focused on my character, on my alleged violations of the court’s instructions and expectations, and they finished with the obstruction allegation. Facts were absent, but that didn’t matter. I listened in weary disbelief as Weissman quoted news headlines and summarized conclusions as if there was no other interpretation. I tried