Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was indicted by a grand jury in New York on 16 state felony charges, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance announced Wednesday.
The announcement of the charges, which includes multiple counts of residential mortgage fraud and other state felonies, came just after Manafort was sentenced to an additional 43 months in prison by a federal judge in the District of Columbia for charges stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
The sentence from U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson is the second sentence Manafort has received in two weeks in two separate cases brought by Mueller. He faces more than seven years in prison for federal crimes, including bank and tax fraud and conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
Separate from the federal charges, Manafort was charged with a total of 16 counts in New York, including three counts of residential mortgage fraud, one count of attempting to commit residential mortgage fraud, three counts of conspiracy, eight counts of falsifying business records, and one count of scheme to defraud.
Vance said Manafort engaged in a “yearlong residential mortgage fraud scheme” through which he and others falsified business records in an effort to “illegally obtain millions of dollars.”
“No one is beyond the law in New York,” Vance said in a statement. The state crimes for which Manafort is accused “strike at the heart of New York’s sovereign interests, including the integrity of our residential mortgage market,” he said.
The state charges could end up reducing the value of a pardon from President Trump, who has praised Manafort as a “brave man” for whom he feels “very badly.” Many suspect Manafort is angling for a pardon for the federal charges against him that led to a total sentence of 81 more months in prison, but a Trump pardon would not help him avoid a sentence related to state charges.
The president can only issue pardons for federal crimes.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday that Trump would decide whether to issue a pardon for Manafort “when he is ready.”
The investigation by prosecutors in New York began in March 2017 and “yielded serious criminal charges for which the defendant has not been held accountable,” Vance said.
The indictment was filed last week.
There appears to be overlap between the alleged crimes cited in the indictment from Vance and evidence presented as part of the federal charges brought against Manafort by Mueller’s team last year.
Federal prosecutors said during his trial in Virginia — he was found guilty on eight counts of bank and tax fraud — that Manafort made millions from political consulting work in Ukraine, which he hid from the Internal Revenue Service. His income, however, began to crater in 2015.
That turn of events, prosecutors said, led Manafort to lie to banks to secure millions of dollars in loans to fund an opulent lifestyle replete with high-end clothes and luxury cars.
Prosecutors provided the jury with evidence Manafort submitted doctored financial statements from his consulting firm that inflated its income and failed to disclose outstanding debts on two properties he owned.
