Manafort appeals

Manafort appeals judge's decision to jail him

By JOSH GERSTEIN

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is appealing a judge's decision to jail him over charges that he attempted to tamper with the testimony of two potential witnesses against him.

Ten days after U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson revoked Manafort's house arrest and ordered him jailed, his defense attorneys filed an official notice Monday appealing her ruling to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Manafort's defense team also filed another appeal Monday over a decision Jackson issued nearly two months ago tossing out a civil suit Manafort hoped to use to block any further prosecutions of him by special counsel Robert Mueller.

At the June 15 hearing at which Jackson remanded Manafort into custody, defense lawyer Richard Westling signaled a possible appeal on the bail issue when he asked the judge to delay the effect of her order so that the defense could appeal. She refused.

Manafort was then led out of the courtroom by federal marshals and, later that day, taken to a Virginia jail about two hours' drive south of Washington. The website for the Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw initially showed Manafort assigned to a VIP wing at the prison, but his name was later deleted from the jail's public inmate listing.

Getting Manafort released will be an uphill battle. He currently faces two criminal cases brought by Mueller. One, in front of Jackson in Washington, charges him with money laundering, failing to register as a foreign lobbyist for his Ukraine-related work and now witness tampering. The other case, in front of U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis in Alexandria, Virginia, charges him with tax evasion, bank fraud and failing to report foreign bank accounts.

Whatever the D.C. Circuit rules on Manafort's appeal, Ellis also has authority to keep him jailed pending trial. Ellis answers to a different appeals court, the Richmond-based 4th Circuit.

Manafort is currently set to face trial first in the Virginia case, on July 25, with the D.C. trial to follow on Sept. 17.

Manafort filed a civil suit in January that was framed as a broad challenge to Mueller's authority. However, as the criminal cases progressed, he made similar motions in those cases, mooting much of the lawsuit. His attorneys pressed on with the suit as a way to try to limit further investigation or prosecution of Manafort on issues he has argued are unrelated to Mueller's core mandate to explore potential collusion between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia.

In April, Jackson dismissed the suit, saying it called for unmerited speculation about future actions Mueller might take. If the appeals court sticks to its usual timeline for cases, it is highly unlikely to issue any ruling on the civil case before either of Manafort's trials conclude.

The D.C. Circuit is likely to act somewhat more quickly on Manafort's request for release, but it would also have to expedite that appeal significantly to produce a ruling prior to Manafort's scheduled trial in Virginia next month.