The legal problems of Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, have been going from bad to worse. The 70-year-old Manafort is already serving seven and one-half years in federal prison, but when he appeared in a courtroom in New York City on Thursday, June 27, he was fighting separate accusations and entered a “not guilty” plea to mortgage fraud charges. And if he is ultimately convicted, there is a possibility that Manafort could end up with even more prison time.
The mortgage fraud charges Manafort pled “not guilty” to were not federal charges, but rather, charges in New York State and were part of an indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. And the fact that Vance is prosecuting Manafort at the state level is important.
In 2018, Manafort’s federal prosecution and trial in Alexandria, Virginia were a result of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Manafort was never accused of criminally conspiracy with Russian government officials, and when Mueller wrapped up his investigation earlier this year, he concluded that the 2016 Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians — although questionable — never reached the level of a full-fledged criminal conspiracy. But Mueller’s team found a mountain of evidence of tax and bank crimes on Manafort’s part, and he was convicted on multiple counts last year.
View the complete June 28 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.