A federal grand jury in Virginia approved a new set of charges from special counsel Robert Mueller against former Trump campaign aides Paul Manafort and Rick Gates Thursday afternoon.
Mueller had indicted Manafort and Gates on a combined 12 counts last October in Washington, DC, but he has now assembled a “superseding indictment” with a combined 32 counts of tax, financial, and bank fraud charges against the two men — in Virginia rather than Washington.
There have been reports that Gates was close to making a plea deal with Mueller’s team, but that seems not to have panned out.
Vox
The 32 counts include false tax returns and false amended returns, failure to file foreign bank and financial accounts, bank fraud conspiracy, and bank fraud.
If I understand correctly, this pleading supersedes the earlier Manafort charge of lying to the FBI. If so, this is a much more serious set of charges, and Manafort and Gates are either going to pay dearly for refusing to cooperate, or Trump is going to pardon them.
In the pleading body, it also appears to be describing money laundering. Read it for yourself here. I'll follow up with other analyses from people who actually understand what's going on.
No comments:
Post a Comment