Incarcerated, twice-convicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is scheduled to be arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday afternoon. Manafort’s arraignment is scheduled to begin around 2:15 p.m. in New York City, where Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance indicted him for numerous alleged fraud offenses.
President Donald Trump‘s Department of Justice controversially intervened on June 17 to prevent Manafort from being held in solitary confinement at Rikers Island pending his Manhattan trial. A DOJ official cited Manafort’s “unique health and safety needs.” Manafort was instead held at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center.
Manafort was previously sentenced in Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) and Washington, D.C. for a litany of federal offenses.
In August 2018, Manafort was found guilty of tax fraud, bank fraud, and failure to disclose a foreign bank account. Manafort was then scheduled to be tried on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States in Washington, D.C. for failing to register as a foreign agent, money laundering, witness tampering, and making false statements in September 2018.
Manafort, however, agreed to plead guilty in advance of that, therefore never undergoing a second trial by jury. He also agreed to a cooperation agreement that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would later say Manafort breached by lying. Manafort’s EDVA and D.C. sentences added up to 7 1/2 years of federal prison time, prison time he is currently serving out.
But after Manafort was convicted in Washington, D.C. back in March, Vance indicted Manafort on state charges, including: three counts of residential mortgage fraud in the first degree; one count of attempted first-degree residential mortgage fraud; three counts of conspiracy in the fourth degree; eight counts of falsifying business records in the first degree; and one count of scheme to defraud in the first degree. The move was seen as a back-up plan in the event that President Trump decided to pardon Manafort, as presidential pardon power does not extend to state crimes. As Law&Crime noted before, double jeopardy concerns have been raised, but a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision appears to have resolved the issue.
Manafort popped up again in the news last week when the judge in his D.C. case unsealed his private communications with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
[Image via Alexandria Detention Center]
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