Feds drop effort to seize Manafort's Bridgehampton mansion, other properties

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s pardon of his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort led the Justice Department on Friday to end its bid to seize his Bridgehampton mansion as well as his Brooklyn town house and lower Manhattan condo, court records show.

The biggest prize among the three parcels and bank account under seizure was the 10-bedroom, six-bathroom home with a pool on a 2.4-acre lot in Bridgehampton that Zillow estimated to be worth about $11.1 million and noted that it was not on the market.

But it’s unlikely Manafort will profit from the returned properties, which combined could be worth as much as $19 million, according to Zillow’s estimates, because Manafort’s creditors would get first dibs on any of the proceeds.

"The department has determined that due to President Trump’s full and unconditional pardon of Paul Manafort, it is necessary to dismiss the criminal forfeiture proceedings involving the four assets which were the subject of the ongoing forfeiture ancillary proceedings," a Justice Department spokesman told Politico after prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss in U.S. District Court in Washington.

The properties also included a seven-bedroom, four-bathroom town house in Brooklyn estimated by Zillow to be worth about $4.3 million, and a three-bedroom, three-bathroom condo in lower Manhattan worth about $3.5 million.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson agreed Friday to dismiss the forfeiture proceedings, initiated in March 2019 after Manafort’s sentencing, shortly after the Justice Department filed its motion.

Trump pardoned Manafort on Dec. 23, nearly two years after federal courts in March 2019 sentenced him to 7 1/2 years for a conviction and a separate guilty plea to bank and tax fraud, money laundering and witness tampering, among other violations.

He had been serving his sentence at home with his wife in an Alexandria, Virginia, condo under COVID-19 protocols for vulnerable inmates since last May after being imprisoned at the minimum-security Loretto Federal Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania.

Manafort was released from federal custody five days after his pardon, according to the Bureau of Federal Prisons.