NEW YORK, June 28 — Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, already serving federal prison time for financial fraud, pleaded not guilty yesterday to further graft charges brought by state prosecutors in New York.
Manafort 70, one of the first people to be convicted in connection with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference, was led into the courtroom in handcuffs.
He denied 16 new charges, including falsifying business records and mortgage fraud.
On the same day that he was sentenced by a Washington judge to seven-and-a-half years in prison for federal charges in March, New York prosecutors filed state charges against him.
While the president could pardon his federal crimes, he has no power to override state convictions.
Manafort has already started serving his federal sentence, and the once expensively suited political consultant appeared in court wearing dark blue prison clothes and white sneakers, his hair unkempt and grey.
During the arraignment hearing yesterday, Manafort’s lawyers told reporters they would challenge the legality of the New York charges of mortgage fraud, arguing that their client had already faced the same charges in Virginia and that he could not be charged with the same crime twice.
The judge set the next hearing in the case for October 9.
Manafort had been serving his sentence in a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania but was transferred to a Manhattan prison ahead of his New York trial.
He had originally been due to be held in the notorious New York state prison on Rikers Island, but was switched to a federal holding facility after the intervention of senior justice department officials earlier this month. — AFP
