U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III raised the hopes of President Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort in May by aggressively questioning whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller had the authority to prosecute him for bank fraud, tax evasion, and other alleged financial crimes, saying he saw no connection between the Manfort case and "anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate." Ellis dashed those hopes Tuesday, finding that "upon further review," Mueller's team had properly "followed the money paid by pro-Russian officials" to Manafort, and the case could go to trial in Virginia next month.
This is bad news for Manafort, the only one of four Trump campaign officials who chose to fight Mueller's charges rather than cooperate. But "it also hobbles a favored talking point of Trump and his legal team as they repeatedly attack Mueller's investigation as overly broad and seek to undermine its legitimacy," The Associated Press notes. In his 31-page ruling, Ellis reiterated his concerns about the broad scope of special prosecutors generally, warning that "those involved should be sensitive to the danger unleashed when political disagreements are transformed into partisan prosecutions." But he said "no interpretive gymnastics are necessary to determine that the investigation at issue here falls within" Mueller's mandate.
Mueller is also prosecuting Manafort for money-laundering conspiracy, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, and other alleged crimes in federal court in Washington, D.C., and the judge in that case, Amy Berman Jackson, affirmed Mueller's authority to pursue the charges last month.
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