The Manafort Tampering Allegations
By Paul Rosenzweig
Wednesday, June 6, 2018, 3:33 PM
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has accused Paul Manafort of attempted witness tampering. If the allegations are true, Manafort will have violated the conditions of his release and might have his bail revoked. Judge Amy Berman Jackson has scheduled a hearing on the matter for late next week.
I yield to no one in my disdain for President Trump. And I certainly have no brief for Manafort, who has been accused of laundering tens of millions of dollars from sources connected with Russia and the Ukraine. Thus my overall assessment is that Manafort has some significant legal exposure and that, given his role in the Trump presidential campaign, that exposure is of concern to Trump and of interest to the special counsel.
All that said, I think that the special counsel's allegations of witness tampering are rather ... thin. The FBI agent's declaration in support of the allegations is long on detail about what Manafort and the "Hapsburg Group" did before the elections and short on information about the tampering allegation itself. Drill down into the exhibits and you will see that only one, Exhibit N, is evidence of communications between Manafort and the witnesses he is alleged to have contacted in a tampering effort.
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https://www.lawfareblog.com/manafort-tampering-allegations
