Adding to David’s post below, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to know that you can’t threaten and intimidate witnesses, period, let alone while you are on home confinement. And Paul Manafort knows that. I mean they’re all stupid in the sense that they have white guy arrogance in that they think they can get away with anything, but they’re not that stupid that they don’t know that witness tampering is no bueno.
And that’s what you need to keep in mind when you talk about Paul Manafort- he’s so guilt and so compromised and in so deep that he determined that witness tampering and threatening witnesses was his LEAST bad option.