Manafort, Gates respond to charges; lawyers call federal case ‘embellished,’
Lawyers call federal case ‘embellished’
WASHINGTON – Lawyers defending President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort mounted their first counterattack against federal money laundering and conspiracy charges Thursday, insisting that federal prosecutors had “embellished” the strength of their case.
Manafort and another former Trump aide, Rick Gates, have been under house arrest since Monday, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller unsealed a 12-count indictment tied to their work on behalf of a pro-Russian faction in Ukraine.
The charges that both served as unregistered agents of a foreign government then laundered their profits into the United States are part of Mueller’s wide-ranging investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election.
Manafort’s lawyers, Kevin Downing and Thomas Zehnle, said in a court filing Thursday the case was overblown.
They said the laws governing Manafort’s work in Ukraine are unclear. The money laundering charges are just a “facade,” they added, noting that “in an international scheme to conceal assets, individuals generally move them offshore, not to the United States.”
Their response came the day Manafort and his associate Gates appeared briefly in federal court. U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson ordered that they stay on house arrest and GPS monitoring at least through the weekend, saying she had “concerns” that both men could be a flight risk.
Jackson left in place Thursday a $10 million unsecured bond for Manafort and a $5 million bond for Gates.
Prosecutors estimated that if Manafort is found guilty of all charges, sentencing guidelines would call for him to spend between 12 and 15 years in prison.
The turmoil surrounding the Trump campaign claimed another victim Thursday as Sam Clovis, a former Trump campaign official who is now linked to the federal probe into Russia’s interference in the presidential election, is withdrawing his nomination to be the U.S. Agriculture Department’s chief scientist.
“We respect Mr. Clovis’s decision to withdraw his nomination,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday.
Clovis’s decision comes just days after court filings indicate that he may have encouraged President Donald Trump’s campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos to set up meetings with Russians for the Trump campaign.
Court document show that an unnamed campaign supervisor encouraged Papadopoulos. The Washington Post reported that the unnamed campaign supervisor was Clovis, who was Trump’s national campaign co-chairman.
The Associated Press reported on Thursday that Clovis penned a letter to Trump saying he does “not want to be a distraction or a negative influence” amid “relentless assaults on you and your team.”