I blogged on Tuesday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller claimed that Paul Manafort, the former chairman for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, lied to the FBI and investigators “on a variety of subject matters.”
Since that happened, Manafort’s plea agreement fell apart and now Mueller’s team is considering filing new charges against him.
From Politico:
At a hearing in federal court Friday morning, prosecutors said they are also weighing leveling new criminal charges for Manafort, contending that he obstructed justice and committed additional federal crimes since entering a plea agreement with the special counsel in September.“That determination has not been made,” said special counsel attorney Andrew Weissmann.Weissmann’s contention led judge Amy Berman Jackson, a member of the U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C., to set a tentative March 5 sentencing date for Manafort.Prosecutors will file their more detailed explanation of what they believe Manafort lied about to investigators on Dec. 7. Manafort’s defense team will then have until January to reply, leading to a likely late January hearing on the matter.
US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson “set a tentative sentencing date for March 5 in the case.”
It’s important to remember that none of these “moves by Mueller has definitively answered the question of whether Trump or his associates coordinated with Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.” Trump doesn’t appear to be in any trouble just yet.
Each charge in Manafort’s plea agreement is up to five years in prison. A court will sentence him “on eight felony accounts in a separate case in Virginia in February.”
Manafort and his team said that “he did not violate the plea deal.” The plea agreement meant Manafort forfeited “multiple bank accounts and properties – including his apartment in Trump Tower in New York – and to cooperate with investigators by participating in interviews, providing documents and testifying in court.”
From The New York Times:
As it is, the plea agreement specifies that if prosecutors decide that Mr. Manafort has failed to cooperate fully or “given false, misleading or incomplete information or testimony,” they can prosecute him for crimes to which he did not plead guilty in the District of Columbia. They could also conceivably pursue the 10 charges on which the Virginia jury failed to reach a consensus. Mr. Manafort is scheduled to be sentenced in the Virginia case on Feb. 8.
The judge dismissed those 10 charges without prejudice.
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