Manafort's deal reins in a pardon's impact

Source: Politico | September 14, 2018 | Josh Gerstein

Several aspects of the Mueller Russia probe’s latest bombshell plea deal could stymie any pardon granted by the president. But Trump may not care.

The plea deal special counsel Robert Mueller granted to Paul Manafort on Friday appears built to be pardon-proof.

That doesn’t mean President Donald Trump won’t try to legally absolve Manafort anyway, a step the president has considered taking for months. But Friday‘s events mean Trump’s ability to contain the legal damage from his former campaign chairman is now severely limited.

Two new factors appear to stymie the impact of a potential Trump pardon for Manafort.

The first is that Manafort is already talking. One obvious rationale for a pardon would be to reward Manafort for holding out against Mueller’s pressure for cooperation in building a case against the president or those close to him. But Manafort’s lead lawyer said Friday his client has already cooperated with Mueller’s team, and Friday’s plea agreement says that Manafort “shall cooperate fully, truthfully, completely and forthrightly with the Government and other law enforcement authorities identified by the Government in any and all matters to which the Government deems the cooperation relevant.”

Even if Trump might have hoped to stop Manafort from singing, Friday’s plea suggests he has already reached the first chorus.

The pivotal questions Mueller’s lawyers want to ask — including about a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians attended by Manafort along with Donald Trump Jr. and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — have likely already been asked and answered with Manafort’s testimony locked in.

“Mueller likely already has all of Manafort’s information,” former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara tweeted Friday. “You get the information before you offer the agreement.”

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Second, Mueller managed to get concessions from Manafort that limit the value of any pardon. Manafort admitted guilt on virtually all of the charges he faced in both Washington, D.C., and Virginia, including a slew of bank fraud charges. Each of those admissions could give state or local prosecutors a potential charge against Manafort that would survive even in the event of a Trump pardon, since he can pardon only federal offenses.

“By admitting to all of the facts in both indictments, the conviction is pardon proof in the sense that if Trump ever pardoned Manafort, a state attorney general could take Manafort’s admissions in the plea and use them to indict Manafort for state charges,” former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman said.

The steps Mueller’s lawyers have taken mean a pardon won’t likely be a particularly effective way of discouraging Manafort from offering Mueller whatever Manafort has that might be incriminating toward Trump, Trump Jr., Kushner or others.

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During a 35-minute presentation to U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson as Manafort sat listening nearby, prosecutor Andrew Weissmann seemed to highlight the mundane fact that the former Trump campaign chair had agreed he was guilty of the seven bank fraud charges the jury had deadlocked on in the Virginia case.

“There are other parts of the statement of offense that don’t relate to a plea of guilty here, but are admissions by the defendant to all of the remaining bank fraud counts on which the jury was hung in the Eastern District of Virginia,” Weissmann said. “They are set out in writing.”

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However, as Weissmann emphasized, Manafort’s admission to the bank fraud allegations was not part of any specific charges he pleaded guilty to Friday.

“It seems to preserve those charges and create an opportunity for future state prosecution,” Shugerman said. “It preserves Illinois, California, New York, Virginia as well as Florida as potential jurisdictions to go after him on state charges.”

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