Manafort pleads not guilty.
NEW YORK » A frail Paul Manafort shuff led into court Thursday in handcuffs and prison garb and pleaded not guilty to New York state mortgage fraud charges that could keep him behind bars even if President Donald Trump pardons him for federal crimes uncovered during the probe of Russian election meddling.
A lawyer for Manafort, the former 2016 Trump campaign chairman turned twice-convicted federal inmate, said he intends to challenge the state case under New York’s strong double jeopardy protections. State law prohibits prosecutors from bringing state charges against a person who has previously been charged for the same conduct under federal law.
“In our views, the laws of New York do not allow the people to do what they did in this case,” lawyer Todd Blanche told reporters after Manafort’s arraignment.
Manafort, wearing a blue prison jumpsuit, walked with a limp as court officers led him down a public hall to and from the courtroom. He had been transferred last week to a federal detention center in New York for his arraignment in the state case.
Manafort, 70, remained seated as he entered his plea and had to be helped out of his chair when taken out of the courtroom. He used a wheelchair at his last federal sentencing in March because of gout. Manafort is already serving a 7 ½ -year prison sentence for misleading the U.S. government about his lucrative foreign lobbying work.
Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. announced the state charges in March, just minutes after Manafort was sentenced in the second of his two federal cases.
Some of the alleged conduct described in the New York indictment echoes the charges and testimony in Manafort’s federal cases. Paperwork filed by New York prosecutors in connection with Thursday’s arraignment cite admissions Manafort made during his federal trial in Washington in September regarding misrepresentations in mortgage applications for properties in Manhattan and Brooklyn and on Long Island.