And so Paul Manafort goes free

When the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, first brought charges against Mr. Manafort in March 2019, it was widely understood that he was doing so to make sure that Mr. Manafort would face prosecution even if Mr. Trump decided to pardon him.

At the time, Mr. Manafort was serving a sentence of seven and a half years in a Pennsylvania federal prison after being convicted at a 2018 financial fraud trial by prosecutors working for the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. In October, a New York appeals court found that Mr. Vance’s efforts to try Mr. Manafort violated the state’s double jeopardy law. Mr. Vance took the case to the Court of Appeals.

[...]

New York’s highest court said quietly last week it would not review lower court rulings on the case.

The court’s decision brings to an end the district attorney’s quest to ensure that the campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, will face state charges for mortgage fraud and other state felonies, crimes similar to those for which he was convicted in federal court and then pardoned by Mr. Trump.

[...]

While the U.S. Constitution bars being tried twice for the same crime, the Supreme Court has long held that there is one exception: Federal and state prosecutions for the same conduct are allowed because the federal government and states are understood to be independent sovereigns. In 2019, the court affirmed that exception.

That year, the state legislature in New York passed a measure that lawmakers argued was necessary in order to check Mr. Trump’s pardon power and to ensure that his associates were not permitted to escape justice.

[...]

The law passed too late to apply to Mr. Manafort’s case.

[...]

It is possible, though unlikely, that Mr. Manafort may still face federal charges. Last month, Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor from the special counsel’s office, argued that the wording of Mr. Trump’s pardons had been “oddly” drafted.

Rather than relieving those who had been pardoned from all potential liability for their actions, Mr. Weissmann argued, the language only narrowly covered their convictions.

In Mr. Manafort’s case, that might leave the door open to new charges, including on crimes that Mr. Manafort admitted he was guilty of as part of a plea deal. Those include 10 counts of financial crimes, as well as other offenses.

  NYT

Don't hold your breath.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.