Court: Manafort lied to prosecutors
A US judge has ruled that President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort had lied to prosecutors about issues at the heart of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.
The judge also ruled on Wednesday that Manafort’s lying was in breach of a plea deal pledging to cooperate in return for a lighter sentence. He could be looking at a jail term for the rest of his life. The sentencing is on March 13. Manafort, 69, is also awaiting sentencing in another case in which he was held guilty of multiple charges of bank fraud and tax evasion.
Judge Amy Herman Jackson in Washington DC ruled that Manafort intentionally made false statements to the FBI, the office of the special counsel and the grand jury on his interactions and communications with Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime associate of Manafort with alleged links to Russian intelligence. Their meetings are key to Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling, specially one that took place at a New York cigar club in August 2016. Manafort was still heading Trump’s campaign when he and Kilimnik had discussed Russian hostilities in Ukraine that had attracted severe sanctions from the US. Manafort is also accused of handing over Trump campaign poll data to Kilimnik for handing over to a Russian businessman said to be close to President Vladimir Putin.
‘OFFICIALS DISCUSSED REMOVING TRUMP’
US officials discussed removing Trump from office just months after he become president, former acting FBI chief Andrew McCabe has said.
Alarmed by the firing of James Comey as the FBI director, senior officials of the US justice department considered urging the cabinet to remove Trump, invoking Amendment 25 of the US constitution that allows the vice-president and the cabinet to declare the president unable to govern, McCabe told 60 Minutes.
McCabe said he ordered the expansion of the ongoing Russia probe to investigate Trump after meeting him in May 2017, as he feared he might be removed too. “I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground, in an indelible fashion.”