Paul Manafort is in the hospital after suffering a heart ailment while in prison, a source familiar with the matter said Tuesday.
The former Trump campaign chairman is serving a seven-and-a-half-year sentence in a Pennsylvania prison for financial crimes that stemmed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
He was admitted to the hospital on Thursday, lawyer Todd Blanche said. Blanche said Manafort was in stable condition, though he said that he, along with Manafort’s family, was being kept in the dark about the full extent of Manafort’s medical condition.
A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons declined to comment, citing safety and privacy concerns for inmates.
News of Manafort’s medical status, which was first reported byABC News, came the same day that his longtime deputy, Rick Gates, was sentenced on charges also born from the special counsel’s probe.
Gates was sentenced to 45 days in jail and three years probation by a federal judge in Washington on Tuesday. Gates had pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy and lying to the FBI, and had admitted to helping Manafort conceal $75 million in foreign bank accounts from their years of lobbying for Ukraine.
Manafort has been in poor health throughout the past two years, appearing at times for court hearings in a wheelchair and substantially grayed. One of his lawyers said last year that he was having “significant issues” with his health related to the “terms of his confinement” in a jail as the case progressed.
Manafort was due in court Wednesday on separate charges filed in New York state court by the Manhattan district attorney. Manafort will not appear for the hearing, Blanche said, but the case is expected to continue and a judge is likely to rule on a request by Manafort to dismiss the state charges on double jeopardy grounds.
Blanche protested a lack of information from the Bureau of Prisons in a statement Tuesday, saying Manafort’s family and friends “still do not have a full understanding of his medical condition or well-being.”
