Judge T.S. Ellis has denied Paul Manafort's motion to dismiss Special Counsel Robert Mueller's charges against him on the grounds Mueller overstepped his authority, paving the way for Manafort to head to trial in Virginia on July 25th as scheduled.
Judge Ellis spoke out strongly during a hearing in May, questioning whether the special counsel was truly interested in prosecuting Manafort for the decade-old crimes of bank and tax fraud.
“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” Judge T.S. Ellis III said during a morning hearing. “You really care about getting information Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump and lead to his prosecution or impeachment.”
While President Trump praised Ellis at the time, reporters and sources warned the judge's words may not coincide with his final determination. They were correct.
Here is the president in May (from Bloomberg Politics):
“Judge T.S. Ellis -- who is really something very special, I hear from many standpoints, he is a respected person,” Trump said, reading from a news article at the NRA’s annual conference in Dallas, “Suggested the charges before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia were just part of the Mueller team’s designs to pressure Mr. Manafort into giving up information on President Donald Trump or others in the campaign.”
“I’ve been saying that for a long time,” Trump continued. “It is a witch hunt.”
Continuing to read from the article, Trump said “none of that information has to do with information related to the Russian government coordination and the campaign of Donald Trump.
“It doesn’t have anything to do,” Trump said. “It’s from years before. Then how does this have anything to do with the campaign, the judge asks? Let me tell you, folks, we’re all fighting battles, but I love fighting these battles.”
Here is Ellis today:
Specifically, in the May 17 Appointment Order, the Acting Attorney General authorized the Special Counsel to investigate, among other things, “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump ... .” May 17 Appointment Order ¶ (b)(i). It is undisputed that defendant is an “individual[] associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump[;]” indeed, defendant served as the chairman of President Donald Trump’s campaign from March 2016 until August 2016.
(...)
The fact that the Russian government did not make payments to defendant directly is not determinative because the text of the May 17 Appointment Order authorizes investigation of “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” May 17 Appointment Order ¶ (b)(i) (emphasis added).20 Given that, as the Supreme Court has recognized, the term “any” “has an expansive meaning, that is, ‘one or some indiscriminately of whatever kind[,]’”21 the May 17 Appointment Order plainly authorizes the investigation of indirect links between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government in addition to more direct connections. In this regard, the May 17 Appointment Order authorizes the Special Counsel to investigate defendant’s ties with individuals financially and politically supported by the Russian government, even where, as here, those individuals are not themselves members of the Russian government.
WaPo:
Manafort, who in his career as a consultant advised both Republican presidents and foreign dictators, was struggling financially in 2005 when he was connected with Ukrainian politician Viktor Yanukovych.
Yanukovych’s Party of Regions was dominated by oligarchs who made their fortunes after the fall of the Soviet Union. Manafort burnished their image at home with sharp rhetoric and in the U.S. with talk of working together and supporting NATO.
The effort succeeded — Yanukovych was elected president in 2010. But he was ousted four years later amid widespread anti-corruption protests.
In Virginia, Manafort is accused of illegally hiding millions of dollars prosecutors say he made from that work in offshore bank accounts and failing to pay taxes on it. When Yanukovych was unseated and the money dried up, prosecutors say Manafort lied about his income and debt to secure millions in new loans against expensive real estate he had bought with the illegal income.
In the District, Manafort is accused of failing to register as a foreign agent when he lobbied for Yanukovych and lying about doing so, while conspiring to launder the money he made.
Manafort served as Trump’s campaign chair for five months, resigning in the wake of reports that his work involving Ukraine may have been unlawful.
Ellis' Memorandum Opinion continues:
... [T]he Special Counsel is authorized to prosecute federal crimes that arise out of his authorized investigation. And the crimes charged in the Superseding Indictment clearly arise out of the Special Counsel’s investigation into the payments defendant allegedly received from Russian-backed leaders and pro-Russian political officials. Specifically, the Special Counsel “followed the money” paid by pro-Russian officials to defendant, and as a result, claimed to have found evidence that defendant was deliberately hiding these payments from U.S. authorities by disguising the payments as loans from offshore corporate entities and by depositing the payments in offshore accounts and using those accounts to make payments to purchase and to make improvements to U.S. real estate.
(...)
In sum, ¶ (b)(i) of the May 17 Appointment Order makes clear that the Special Counsel’s investigation into the payments defendant received from Russian-backed Ukrainian officials was authorized because the investigation involved potential links between a Trump campaign official — the defendant — and the Russian government via the Russian-backed Ukrainian President. The May 17 Appointment Order also confirms that the Special Counsel was authorized to prosecute the crimes alleged in the Superseding Indictment because evidence of these alleged crimes was uncovered as part of the Special Counsel’s aforementioned investigation.
Ellis' Memorandum Opinion also explains some of what was contained in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's second memo approving the scope of Mueller's investigative authority:
With respect to the defendant, the August 2 Scope Memorandum identified several allegations, including allegations that the defendant:
[c]ommitted a crime or crimes by colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election for President of the United States, in violation of United States law;
[c]ommitted a crime or crimes arising out of payments he received from the Ukrainian government before and during the tenure of President Viktor Yanukovych[.]
Id. at 2. The August 2 Scope Memorandum noted that these allegations against the defendant “were within the scope of [the Special Counsel’s] investigation at the time of [his] appointment and are within the scope of the [Appointment] Order.”
Read more: Memorandum Opinion
Virginia judge rules against Paul Manafort, will let fraud case continue (WaPo)