A US court on Friday sent former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to jail pending trial on charges of money laundering and bank and tax fraud brought against him by Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s team probing Russian meddling in 2016 presidential elections.<\/p>\n
Manafort, who had been out on bail but under house arrest, was led away from the court in Washington at the end of the hearing. Marshals returned briefly to hand over his wallet, belt and tie to his wife Kathleen Manafort.<\/p>\n
He had led President Donald Trump\u2019s campaign for a few months till he was fired for lobbying work for the Ukrainian government. Trump has tried to distance himself from Manafort saying his legal troubles referred to a period before his work for the campaign.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors for Mueller had approached the court earlier this month accusing him of witness tampering, working with a long-time associate who is said to have had links to Russian intelligence.<\/p>\n
Noting that the court cannot turn a blind eye to accusations of witness tampering, US district judge Amy Berman Jackson, said, \u201cYou have abused the trust placed in you six months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t middle school,\u201d she is reported to have told Manafort. \u201cI can\u2019t take your phone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mueller\u2019s prosecutor had alleged that Manafort and his associate had made contacts and attempted to influence witnesses, a public relations group in Europe between February and April this year, while under home arrest on a $10 million bond.<\/p>\n
Through phone calls and messages on WhatsApp, Manaffort and his associate tried to persuade the group \u2014 who were former European officials \u2014 to testify that their lobbying work on Manafort\u2019s behalf was confined to Europe and did not extend to the US.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors have said Manafort engaged the group in 2012 and paid it 2 million euros till 2013, and it was a part of a secret and undisclosed lobbying activity undertaken by Manafort on behalf of his Ukrainian clients in the US. He is arguing that they lobbied only the European Union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A US court on Friday sent former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to jail pending trial on charges of money laundering and bank and tax fraud brought against him by Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s team probing Russian meddling in 2016 presidential elections. Manafort, who had been out on bail but under house arrest, was led […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34292,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34293,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34291\/revisions\/34293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}