Manhattan DA Presses To Revive Manafort Case As Another Trump Associate Faces Criminal Charges

In March 2019, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office indicted Manafort for allegedly falsifying business records to fraudulently obtain millions of dollars in residential mortgage loans, but New York Judge Maxwell Wiley dismissed the state charges on double-jeopardy grounds because Manafort already had been federally indicted for related crimes uncovered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

On Thursday, the DA’s office appealed that decision, arguing the charges brought at the state level center on different elements of the crime  “and were designed to prevent very different kinds of harm than the federal offenses of bank fraud and conspiracy to commit bank fraud,” according to NBC.

The day Manafort faced the state charges (to which he pleaded not guilty), he was sentenced to more than 6 years in prison for conspiracy and fraud in two cases, both of which came out of Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Some observers viewed the state charges as a way to hold Manafort accountable for his crimes if Trump decided to issue a presidential pardon, which he recently did for his friend and former  advisor Roger Stone; pardons do not apply to state convictions.

Thursday was a busy court day for associates of the president: former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was arrested and charged with fraud for allegedly siphoning off funds raised from donors to build a wall on the southern border, joining a long list of President Trump’s associates facing criminal charges.