Judge Amy Berman Jackson found it was “logical and appropriate” for Mueller to investigate Manafort.
By Andrew Prokopandrew@vox.com May 15, 2018, 6:10pm EDT
A federal judge ruled against Paul Manafort’s attempt to dismiss charges brought against him in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, writing that the charges fell “squarely” within special counsel Robert Mueller’s authority — which means Manafort is headed for trial this year.
“The indictment will not be dismissed, and the matter will proceed to trial,” Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote. You can read her full ruling here.
Mueller’s team has indicted Manafort on five charges in DC related to money laundering and not registering as a foreign agent. They’ve also indicted him, separately, on 18 more tax and financial charges in Virginia, which have been brought before a different judge.
Yet none of the charges were directly about Mueller’s central pursuit: Russian interference during the 2016 campaign. Instead, they’re about Manafort’s work for the former government of Ukraine, and most of them are about conduct that preceded the presidential campaign.
Manafort filed motions to dismiss the charges against him in both DC and Virginia court, arguing that Mueller overreached his mandate. His team argued their position before Judge T.S. Ellis III in Virginia earlier this month, and Ellis sounded at least potentially sympathetic.
Ellis hasn’t yet ruled on the matter. But now, his DC counterpart, Jackson, has — and she didn’t buy Manafort’s argument at all, for several reasons.
First, she writes, Mueller was authorized to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the [Trump] campaign.” Manafort chaired the Trump campaign, had worked for “the Russia-backed Ukrainian political party,” and had connections to “other Russian figures” (he’d also worked for Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, for instance). So, Jackson writes, investigating him for this was “logical and appropriate.”
Second, she writes, Mueller was appointed special counsel under a Justice Department regulation that exists only for the department’s “own internal management.” Such a regulation does not create any judicially enforceable rights for defendants, she finds.
Finally, she adds that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s not-very-specific order appointing Mueller is perfectly appropriate within the special counsel regulation — and that even if for some reason it wasn’t, Rosenstein did write a memo explicitly referring the Manafort matters to Mueller later on.
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