Paul Manafort could be locked up as soon as Friday if a judge agrees with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s argument that he tried to tamper with witnesses while under house arrest.
Manafort, a former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump, is accused of money laundering and acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Ukraine. But what could land him in jail as he awaits trial are new charges relating to witness tampering.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson will have the final say after considering arguments from Mueller’s team and Manafort’s lawyers. She could also impose more stringent bail terms than Manafort’s $10 million bond with electronic monitoring.
“She absolutely could lock him up,” former federal prosecutor Courtney Oliva said. “I think he’s got an uphill battle, and it’s likely he’ll get sent to jail. If he’s not, it’s because he’s not your run-of-the-mill defendant, and she’s just being very careful.”
Manafort, 69, faces a Sept. 17 trial in Washington after a July 25 trial on bank- and tax-fraud charges in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia. He’s also expected to be arraigned Friday before Judge Jackson.
Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort, declined to comment.
Prosecutors made the detention request on June 4, when they argued in court papers that Manafort tried to tamper with two witnesses after he was indicted in Washington for a second time on Feb. 23. Four days later, a grand jury indicted Manafort anew, accusing him and an associate of witness tampering.
A judge may revoke bail after finding probable cause that a defendant committed a federal, state or local crime while on pretrial release. The judge must also find “there is no condition or combination of conditions of release that the person will not flee or pose a danger” to the community.
Manafort’s new indictment meant that a grand jury, which meets in secret and hears evidence presented by prosecutors, found probable cause that he broke the law. The legal burden now shifts to Manafort to show he shouldn’t go to jail.
“Manafort’s obstructive conduct — carried out at a time when he was seeking relief from his current conditions of release — instills little confidence that restrictions short of detention will assure Manafort’s compliance with the court’s orders,” prosecutors wrote in the June 4 filing.
In a June 12 court filing, Manafort’s attorneys responded that Mueller contrived “dubious” allegations of tampering based on thin evidence that doesn’t show he intended to corruptly influence trial witnesses.
The majority of the evidence, they said, involves text messages that are “irrelevant, innocuous and unsupportive” of Mueller’s claims. While Mueller says the texts were encrypted through WhatsApp or Telegram Messenger, Manafort’s lawyers said those applications are free and widely used.
Prosecutors claim Manafort and an associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, tried to contact two people who worked with former European leaders, known as the Hapsburg Group, to persuade them to have all their stories match. The group promoted pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych with lobbying in the U.S. without registering, prosecutors said. Manafort insists the lobbying occurred only in Europe.
“The special counsel’s disagreement with Mr. Manafort’s view of this case regarding the Hapsburg Group does not make it a crime for Mr. Manafort to communicate his views to others, especially when he is not aware of who the special counsel may call as witnesses,” Manafort’s attorneys wrote.
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