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New York Charges Paul Manafort With 16 Crimes. If He’s Convicted, Trump Can’t Pardon Him.
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Paul J. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, has been indicted on new fraud charges in New York.CreditJonathan Ernst/Reuters
By William K. Rashbaum
Paul J. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, has been charged in New York with mortgage fraud and more than a dozen other state felonies, the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., said Wednesday, an effort to
ensure he will still face prison time if Mr. Trump pardons him for his federal crimes.
News of the indictment came shortly after Mr. Manafort was sentenced to his second federal prison term in two weeks; he now faces a combined sentence of more than seven years for tax and bank fraud and conspiracy in two related cases brought by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
The president has broad power to
issue pardons for federal crimes, but has no such authority in state cases.
While Mr. Trump has not said he intends to pardon his former campaign chairman, he has often spoken of his power to pardon and has defended Mr. Manafort on a number of occasions,
calling him a “brave man.”
four years in prison on one of his two federal cases, far less time than prosecutors had requested; on Wednesday, he was sentenced in Washington, D.C., to serve an additional three and a half years. He could face up to 25 years in New York state prison if convicted of the most serious charges in the new indictment, which is expected to be announced later on Wednesday.
The loans were also the subject of Mr. Mueller’s investigation and were the basis for some of the counts in the federal indictment that led to Mr. Manafort’s conviction last year in Virginia. But the Manhattan prosecutors deferred their inquiry in order not to interfere with Mr. Mueller’s larger investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
In recent months, prosecutors in the district attorney’s Economic Crimes Bureau resumed their inquiry and began presenting evidence to the grand jury, several people with knowledge of the matter have said.
The district attorney’s office determined some time ago that it would seek charges whether or not the president pardoned Mr. Manafort.
a federal judge ruled he had repeatedly lied to the government about his contact with a Russian associate during the campaign and after the election.
Prosecutors claim that the associate,
Konstantin V. Kilimnik, has ties to Russian intelligence, and have been investigating whether he was involved in a covert attempt to influence the election results.
Follow William K. Rashbaum on Twitter at
@WRashbaum.