Mueller team listening to Manafort’s jail phone calls

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.

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.