Virginia Judge Denies Manafort's Request to Toss Indictment

Special Counsel Robert Mueller won a key victory as a federal judge who had criticized his investigation ruled that he properly brought tax- and bank fraud charges against Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman to President Donald Trump.

The ruling cleared the way for Manafort to go to trial on July 25 in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, where he is accused of failing to pay taxes on income he earned as a political consultant for pro-Russian groups in Ukraine. Manafort, 69, faces a separate trial in Washington on charges of acting as an unregistered agent of Ukraine, laundering money and obstructing justice.

Manafort had argued that Mueller overstepped his authority by charging him with crimes unrelated to Russian election interference. At a hearing on May 4, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III sharply questioned whether Mueller went too far in signing the indictment, while suggesting that prosecutors wanted to coerce Manafort’s cooperation against Trump.

Mueller’s prosecutors acted properly because the crimes charged “clearly arise out of the special counsel’s investigation into the payments defendant allegedly received from Russian-backed leaders and pro-Russian political officials,” Ellis wrote in a 31-page opinion.

“The special counsel ‘followed the money’ paid by pro-Russian officials to defendant, and as a result, claimed to have found evidence that defendant was deliberately hiding these payments from U.S. authorities,” the judge wrote.