U.S. judge sends ex-Trump campaign head Manafort to jail pre-trial

U.S. judge sends ex-Trump campaign head Manafort to jail pre-trial
# 16 June 2018 01:10 (UTC +04:00)

A judge on Friday sent longtime Republican political operator and businessman Paul Manafort to jail pending trial after a charge of witness tampering, the latest episode in a slow fall from grace of a man who was President Donald Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016,A PA reports quoting Reuters.

Manafort, a target of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election, has been indicted on mostly financial-related charges, including conspiring to launder money and defraud the United States. He has pleaded not guilty.

Manafort had been on home confinement in Virginia, and was required to wear an electronic monitoring device. Last week, Mueller charged him in a new indictment with witness tampering, which Manafort pleaded not guilty to on Friday.

But U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington revoked his bail, sending him to jail.

“I have no appetite for this,” she said. “But in the end, I cannot turn a blind eye.”

#
#

THE OPERATION IS BEING PERFORMED