Paul Manafort is all alone. 
 
 Paul Manafort is being kept in solitary confinement in a Virginia jail in order to “guarantee his safety,” his lawyer said in court documents filed this week. “He is locked in his cell for at least 23 hours per day (excluding visits from his attorneys),” defense attorney Kevin Downing wrote. 
 
 In a brief filed Thursday, Downing wrote that Manafort is unable to adequately prepare for his two upcoming trails, the first of which starts later this month, while locked up. Manafort’s lawyers also argued that the witness-tampering charges that landed him in jail are not so bad because they did not include threats of physical violence. So they’re asking that Manafort be released. 
 
 Prosecutors from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office were having none of it. In its own filing, Mueller’s team said Manafort’s attempt to tamper with witnesses is “no less damaging to the justice system when committed through covert corrupt persuasion than through overt violence.” Last month, Manafort was accused of trying to influence witness testimony while he was under house arrest. 
 
 They also wrote that Manafort does not deserve special treatment since the limitations he’s facing “are common to defendants incarcerated pending trial.” 
 
 Manafort has reportedly been locked away in the “VIP” section of Virginia’s Northern Neck Regional Jail since he arrived on June 15. John Dowd, former lawyer to President Trump, has called the imprisonment “harsh” and an “outrageous violation” of Manafort’s civil liberties. ||||| Manafort’s Northern Virginia trial on charges of bank fraud, tax evasion and failure to report foreign bank accounts is scheduled to begin July 25. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo Mueller team listening to Manafort’s jail phone calls Contrary to his lawyers’ court filings, the former Trump campaign chairman says he’s being treated like a ‘VIP’ in prison. 
 
 Paul Manafort may not be a free man. But the former Donald Trump campaign chairman’s jail conditions are hardly the stuff of Alcatraz. 
 
 According to telephone calls being monitored by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, Manafort has recently told people he’s being treated like a “VIP” at the Virginia prison where he’s been held since June 15. 
 
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 The longtime GOP operative’s living arrangements, described in an eight-page motion filed Wednesday by Mueller’s prosecutors, also include “unique privileges” like a private, self-contained cell that’s bigger than what other inmates get, a private bathroom and shower, a personal telephone and daily access between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 10 p.m. to a workspace where Manafort can meet with his lawyers and prepare for his upcoming criminal trials. 
 
 Manafort also doesn’t have to wear a prison uniform at the Northern Neck Regional Jail about two hours south of Washington D.C. 
 
 But there are some drawbacks. Mueller’s team on Wednesday revealed it can listen in on any phone calls that Manafort has with people other than his lawyers, and it’s one of those conversations that prosecutors are now using in their opposition to the defendant’s request to postpone his upcoming Virginia trial until after a separate criminal case is finished in Washington D.C. 
 
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 Andrew Weissmann, a special counsel prosecutor leading the Manafort case, argued in the motion that Manafort may have ulterior motives in shifting around the order of his trials. As evidence, he cited a June 20 monitored phone call Manafort had with an unnamed person who did not believe the Washington D.C. venue was favorable. There, Manafort explained: “Think about how it’ll play elsewhere…There is a strategy to it, even in failure, but there’s a hope in it.” 
 
 Manafort's lawyers later on Wednesday accused Mueller's team of showing a "lack of concern" for due process. 
 
 "The Special Counsel’s opposition is self-serving and inaccurate. While the opposition does not generally misrepresent the confinement conditions its cavalier dismissal of the challenges of preparing for back-to-back complex white collar criminal trials while the defendant is in custody shows a lack of concern with fairness or due process," the lawyers wrote. 
 
 The lawyers also accused Mueller's team of taking some of Manafort's comments out of context. 
 
 "Armed with personal conversations between Mr. Manafort and his family, the Special Counsel selects snippets to support its version of events," they wrote. "The Special Counsel does not pause to consider the reasons a detained defendant might have to make his situation sound better when speaking with concerned friends and family." 
 
 For now, Manafort’s Northern Virginia trial on charges of bank fraud, tax evasion and failure to report foreign bank accounts is scheduled to begin July 25. But before that happens, U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III has scheduled oral arguments for Tuesday on Manafort’s motion to postpone the proceedings, as well as a related request for a change of venue from Alexandria to Roanoke, Virginia. 
 
 Ellis on Tuesday also ordered Manafort to be transferred to a detention center in Alexandria and rejected a last-minute request from the defendant’s lawyers to let their client continue to stay at the Northern Neck prison after they’d previously complained about logistical challenges that were hurting their ability to prepare for the trial. 
 
 “It is surprising and confusing when counsel identifies a problem and then opposes the most logical solution to that problem,” the judge wrote in a footnote in his decision, where he also questioned the Manafort lawyers’ argument about concerns for their client’s safety in Alexandria. The detention center’s staff are “very familiar with housing high-profile defendants including foreign and domestic terrorists, spies and traitors,” Ellis wrote. 
 
 Also Tuesday, Ellis issued an order demanding Manafort’s appearance in his courtroom for the start of the July 25 trial. 
 
 In another filing, Mueller’s team on Wednesday also asked the federal court to issue 100 blank subpoenas to potential witnesses in the upcoming Manafort trial. And Ellis also ordered on Wednesday that a panel of prospective jurors be convened on July 24 to fill out a questionnaire, indicating that plans for the trial are proceeding rapidly. 
 
 In arguing against the trial’s delay, Mueller team’s offered Ellis a very different picture of Manafort’s prison conditions compared with the descriptions detailed by attorneys for the former Trump campaign leader. Last week, in an appeal to a federal appeals court in Washington aimed at overturning their client’s pre-trial jailing, the lawyers complained that Manafort was “locked in his cell for at least 23 hours per day (excluding visits from his attorneys)” and that he was in “solitary confinement because the facility cannot otherwise guarantee his safety.” 
 
 But Manafort has been hardly cut off from the outside world, according to the Mueller prosecutors. He has access to a personal telephone in his cell that he’s allowed to use for more than 12 hours a day to speak with his lawyers and other people. During the last three weeks, Manafort has also had more than 100 phone calls with his lawyers, speaking with them every day and often several times a day, as well as another 200 calls with other people. 
 
 Mueller’s team also disputed what defense attorneys have told the court concerning the rules surrounding how much time Manafort can spend on the phone. While Manafort’s lawyers have said he’s limited to 10 minutes per call, the special counsel’s office countered that was “incorrect” and explained that the calls can actually last 15 minutes, with no restrictions on how many calls he makes. 
 
 “Meaning that Manafort immediately can reconnect with his attorneys whenever the fifteen minutes expire,” Weissman wrote. Citing telephone logs, the Mueller prosecutor added that Manafort has had “successive” phone sessions with his lawyers lasting more than 40 minutes. 
 
 Manafort’s calls with his lawyers “are not monitored,” Weissman said. 
 
 While in prison, Manafort also has access to a laptop to review documents and prepare for his trial, and the jail has “made extra accommodations” for Manafort to use the computer, including an extension cord that lets him work in his cell so he doesn’t have to go to the separate workspace. 
 
 Manafort is not allowed to send or receive emails while in jail. But Mueller’s prosecutors said Manafort “appears to have developed a workaround.” During his monitored phone calls, Manafort has told people he reads and composes emails on a second laptop that his lawyers have “shuttled in and out” of the jail. Then his lawyers sent the messages after they’ve left the prison. ||||| FILE - In this April 4, 2018, file photo, Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, leaves the federal courthouse in Washington. Lawyers for Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this April 4, 2018, file photo, Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, leaves the federal courthouse in Washington. Lawyers for Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, have asked a judge to relocate a criminal trial starting later this month... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this April 4, 2018, file photo, Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, leaves the federal courthouse in Washington. Lawyers for Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, have asked a judge to relocate a criminal trial starting later this month... (Associated Press) FILE - In this April 4, 2018, file photo, Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, leaves the federal courthouse in Washington. Lawyers for Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's jailed former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, has said in monitored phone calls that he is being treated like a "VIP" while behind bars, federal prosecutors said Wednesday as they argued against postponing his financial crimes trial. 
 
 The court filing from special counsel Robert Mueller's office is part of an ongoing tussle over Manafort's confinement that began after a judge revoked his house arrest last month and ordered him jailed on witness tampering allegations. 
 
 Manafort's lawyers have said they cannot properly prepare for trial with a client jailed two hours outside of Washington, D.C. In response, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III ordered Manafort moved from his current jail to one in Alexandria, Virginia, where the federal courthouse is located, so that he can be closer to his lawyers. 
 
 Ellis insisted this week that the transfer proceed even after Manafort's lawyers, citing concerns about his safety and adjusting to a new jail so close to his trial date, asked that he stay put. 
 
 Manafort is scheduled for trial on July 25 on charges arising from work he performed for pro-Russia Ukrainian interests. 
 
 In their court filing Wednesday, prosecutors sought to pick apart Manafort's arguments that he needs to delay the trial because of his jail conditions. 
 
 They pointed out that he has had a personal telephone in his unit at the Northern Neck Regional Jail and has had more than 100 phone calls with his lawyers in the last three weeks as they prepare for trial. He has a personal laptop on which he can review materials from the case and access to his own workspace to meet with his legal team, they said. 
 
 Though Manafort's lawyers have said he spends nearly all of his days in solitary confinement, prosecutors described his living arrangements as a "private, self-contained living unit, which is larger than other inmates' units" with its own bathroom and shower. 
 
 "On the monitored prison phone calls, Manafort has mentioned that he is being treated like a 'VIP,'" prosecutors quoted him as having said. 
 
 They also said Manafort has said in the calls that he is able to visit with his lawyers every day and that he has "all my files like I would at home." 
 
 ___ 
 
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– Paul Manafort's lawyers are pushing to get him out of jail to prepare for his upcoming trials, and their newly filed court documents reveal something of a surprise: President Trump's former campaign manager is being kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, reports Axios. The reason? The Northern Neck Regional Jail in Virginia "cannot otherwise guarantee his safety," the lawyers write. What's more, the jail is about a two-hour drive for his defense team, and all of this "makes it effectively impossible for Mr. Manafort to prepare" for his trials on money laundering and bank fraud. Manafort had his bail revoked and got sent to jail last month after he was accused of tampering with witnesses. His lawyers are appealing that decision, but prosecutors say the limitations he's facing behind bars "are common to defendants incarcerated pending trial," per New York. The court documents do not provide details on the safety concerns regarding Manafort. His first trial is scheduled to start on July 25, and the charges he's facing are unrelated to his work on the Trump campaign of 2016.