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U.S. judge agrees to delay Manafort trial until next week
ALEXANDRIA, Va., (Reuters) -A U.S. judge yesterday delayed the criminal trial of President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort until next week, and made public the identity of five witnesses granted immunity to testify.
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III also said the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller must provide a list of about 30 witnesses to lawyers for Manafort, who had sought a delay in his trial that had been scheduled to start on Wednesday on bank and tax fraud charges.
Manafort, a longtime Republican operative and businessman, appeared in court for the hearing in a green prison jumpsuit. He has pleaded not guilty to 18 counts of bank and tax fraud and failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.
It will be the first trial to originate in the special counsel’s investigation of Russia’s role in the 2016 election.
Ellis said the trial delay until July 31 would give Manafort’s attorneys more time to review material recently submitted by prosecutors, but he warned it would not be a lengthy process.
“I’m not going to allow this trial to drag on,” Ellis said, adding he would not let it turn into political theater. “I’m not in the theater business.”
According to court filings unsealed by Ellis on Monday, Mueller had requested immunity for Dennis Raico, Cindy Laporta, Conor O’Brien, Donna Duggan and James Brennan. They are all financial professionals who may have gained some knowledge of Manafort’s business dealings.
Prosecutors said on Monday the only references to Manafort’s role in the campaign during the trial would involve a banker who agreed to lend Manafort money in exchange for a role in Trump’s campaign.
The banker was not named in open court. In court on Monday, Ellis asked prosecutors if the banker who lent Manafort money in exchange for a campaign role knew the documents to support the loan were inaccurate. “He did,” prosecutor Greg Andres replied.