NEW YORK (Reuters) – Paul Manafort, U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s former campaign chairman, on Wednesday won the dismissal of New York state fraud charges, in a defeat for the Manhattan district attorney\u2019s efforts to hold him accountable even if pardoned by Trump. <\/p>\n
Justice Maxwell Wiley of the state Supreme Court in Manhattan said at a hearing that letting the district attorney, Cyrus Vance, prosecute Manafort would violate Manafort\u2019s protection against double jeopardy, or being prosecuted twice for the same conduct. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will appeal today\u2019s decision and will continue working to ensure that Mr. Manafort is held accountable for the criminal conduct against the People of New York that is alleged in the indictment,\u201d Vance\u2019s spokesman Danny Frost said in a statement. <\/p>\n
Vance, a Democrat, announced the indictment of Manafort on 16 felony counts including residential mortgage fraud on March 13, less than an hour after Manafort was ordered to spend 7-1\/2 years in prison on various federal charges. <\/p>\n
Those charges stemmed from former U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and resulted in Manafort\u2019s August 2018 conviction on tax evasion and bank fraud. <\/p>\n
Trump, a Republican, has denied colluding with Moscow. <\/p>\n
Manafort, 70, has been serving his sentence at a federal prison in Pennsylvania, but was hospitalized last week for what his lawyer called a cardiac incident. <\/p>\n
He did not attend Wednesday\u2019s hearing but his lawyer, Todd Blanche, said \u201cobviously, we are very happy\u201d with the dismissal. Manafort had pleaded not guilty. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis indictment should never have been brought, and today\u2019s decision is a stark reminder that the law and justice should always prevail over politically motivated actions,\u201d Blanche said in a statement. <\/p>\n
Vance focused his case on Manafort\u2019s alleged efforts to obtain millions of dollars of loans, centering on mortgage applications to three banks involving properties in Manhattan; Brooklyn; the Hamptons in Long Island, New York; and California. <\/p>\n
These loans underlay some of the federal case against Manafort in Virginia that led to his prison sentence. <\/p>\n
In his 26-page decision, Wiley said the federal bank fraud and state residential mortgage fraud laws under which Manafort was prosecuted were both intended to combat lending abuses and avert a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. <\/p>\n
He said that meant Vance could not prosecute Manafort under an exception to New York\u2019s double jeopardy prohibition where state laws target \u201cvery different kinds of harm or evil\u201d than federal laws. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe harm or evil the federal bank fraud and the state residential mortgage fraud and attempted residential mortgage fraud statutes were aimed at combating are the same,\u201d Wiley wrote. \u201cThey are certainly not of a very different kind.\u201d <\/p>\n
Mueller\u2019s team had accused Manafort of hiding $16 million from U.S. tax authorities that he earned as a consultant for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, and then lying to banks to obtain loans and enjoy a luxurious lifestyle. <\/p>\n Manafort could have faced up to 25 years in prison if convicted on the top state charges. <\/p>\n A conviction could have ensured that Manafort spent a long time in prison even if Trump pardoned him in his federal case. The U.S. president cannot pardon people for state crimes. <\/p>\n Manafort worked on Trump\u2019s White House campaign for five months in 2016. <\/p>\n Reporting by Brendan Pierson, Karen Freifeld and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Nathan Layne; Editing by David Gregorio, Jonathan Oatis, Nick Zieminski and Paul Simao<\/p>\n Article source: http:\/\/feeds.reuters.com\/~r\/Reuters\/PoliticsNews\/~3\/GALPm_90yZY\/ex-trump-aide-manaforts-fraud-case-in-new-york-dismissed-idUSKBN1YM1NY<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEW YORK (Reuters) – Paul Manafort, U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s former campaign chairman, on Wednesday won the dismissal of New York state fraud charges, in a defeat for the Manhattan district attorney\u2019s efforts to hold him accountable even if pardoned by Trump. Justice Maxwell Wiley of the state Supreme Court in Manhattan said at a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-199393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}