Visits: 3
Take his Trump Tower apartment. Please.
Former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort told prosecutors he preferred that they seize his apartment in Trump Tower rather than surrender one of the four bank accounts special counsel Robert Mueller‘s team was eyeing, Manafort’s plea agreement revealed Friday.
President Donald Trump‘s own New York residence is in that landmark Fifth Avenue building.
Manafort also agreed to forfeit his condominium property at 123 Baxter St. in lower Manhattan to the federal government instead of his home in Arlington, Virginia.
The 69-year old Republican operative in all will forfeit an estimated $46 million worth of real estate and cash as part of his deal to plead guilty Friday in federal court in Washington to two counts of conspiracy. Forfeitures are common in criminal cases where defendants, like Manafort in this instance, are accused of reaping financial windfalls from their misdeeds.
He also agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s ongoing probes of possible collusion by the Trump campaign with Russians interfering in the 2016 presidential election that sent Trump to the White House.
The cash is contained in three Manafort bank accounts — two at Federal Savings Bank and one at Capital One — as well as in a Northwestern Mutual insurance plan. He will retain another bank account.
In addition to the Trump Tower apartment and the Baxter Street property, Manafort will also forfeit two other Big Apple properties: a condo at 29 Howard St. in lower Manhattan, and a townhouse at 377 Union Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.
And he will give up his house at 174 Jobs Lane in Bridgehampton, in the Hamptons section of Long Island, New York.
Prosecutors said Manafort dropped more than $5 million on improving that house and another $820,000 on landscaping there over a six-year period.