Paul Manafort: Trump's former campaign manager sent to jail to await trial

Manafort pleads not guilty to obstruction of justice charges

Paul Manafort arrives at federal court, Friday, June 15, 2018, in Washington (AP)

A federal judge has sent Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort to jail to await his upcoming criminal trials after revoking his bail.

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson made the decision at Mr Manafort’s arraignment in Washington, where he pleaded not guilty to new charges of witness tampering brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. She accused Mr Manafort of treating the court proceedings as “just another marketing exercise” and of abusing the trust placed in him.

“The harm in this case is harm to the administration of justice and harm to the integrity of the court’s system,” Ms Berman Jackson said. “I have no appetite for this. But in the end, I cannot turn a blind eye ... You’ve abused the trust placed in you.“

Responding to the news, President Trump tweeted that it was a "tough sentence” for Mr Manafort, despite a trial not having started. He then returned to his oft-used refrain about the former FBI Director James Comey, and “crooked” Hillary Clinton, who Mr Trump believes should be held to account for actions both before and during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Mr Manafort had previously been under house arrest awaiting two trials for charges of tax evasion and conspiracy against the US, among other charges. He has denied all charges against him.

A federal grand jury indicted Mr Manafort and associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, last week on charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. The pair are accused of tampering with witnesses in the case about their political work in Ukraine.

Mr Manafort pleaded not guilty to the charges, with his lawyers claiming prosecutors were trying to construct a “sinister plot” out of “innocuous” communications.

The political strategist faces five other charges in DC federal court – and 18 in Virginia – stemming from Mr Mueller’s investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia amid their interference in the 2016 presidential election. The charges could send the 69-year-old to prison for the rest of his life.

US marshalls led Mr Manafort out of the courtroom and into a prisoner holding area on Friday, signalling the end of months of attempts by his lawyers to loosen the restrictions on his house arrest. The move will give Mr Manafort and his attorneys less freedom in preparing for his two upcoming trials.

Mr Manafort was the first member of the Trump team to face charges in the Russia investigation, when Mr Mueller charged him with conspiracy, money laundering, and false statements​ related to his political work in Ukraine. The special counsel added tax, financial, and bank fraud charges against him in a new case filed in February.

Now, prosecutors claim Mr Manafort engaged in weeks of witness tampering, using multiple different phones and apps to contact witnesses while out on house arrest. They asked the judge to revoke his bail on Friday, calling him a ”danger to the community”.

Attorneys for Mr Manafort said he could not have tampered with the government’s witnesses, as he did not know who they were.

Mr Manafort now faces up to three months in jail as his second trial is not set to start until September. He is the first member of the Trump team to be jailed in connection with Mr Mueller’s investigation.

Mr Manafort served as the Trump campaign chairman for approximately two months, before his connections to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych surfaced and drew outcry in the US. He stepped down and was replaced by Breitbart News chairman Steve Bannon.

Before his afternoon tweets Mr Trump took part in an impromptu Friday morning interview with Fox News, during which he claimed that he had been ”completely exonerated“ in the Russia investigation by a new report from the Justice Department inspector general into the FBI’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails. The report did not offer any conclusions on the Russia investigation, but did criticise texts from FBI officials disparaging Mr Trump, including one exchange that said “we’ll stop it” when discussing the possibility of Mr Trump becoming president. It also castigated the former FBI Director James Comey for his actions during the Clinton email investigation.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz said Mr Comey had broken “dramatically from FBI and department norms” in his handling of the email inquiry. In his report, the Mr Horowitz criticised Mr Comey’s decision to reveal publicly a week before the election that he had reopened the inquiry into Ms Clinton’s emails, rejecting Mr Comey’s argument that he had acted in the interests of transparency.

He found that while Mr Comey’s actions were not the result of political bias, “by departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the department as fair administrators of justice”.

But Mr Trump has sought to equate Mr Mueller’s investigation with Mr Comey’s conduct.

“I did nothing wrong, there was no collusion, no obstruction,” Mr Trump told Fox & Friends. “The IG [inspector general] report yesterday went a long way to show that, and I think that the Mueller investigation has been totally discredited.”

In another of his afternoon tweets, Mr Trump said that the hounding of hm “never ends” as he railed against the “dishonest people” in the inspector general report and called the Mueller probe “a phony witch hunt”.