The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has indicted Paul Manafort for mortgage fraud and more than a dozen other state felonies. This is a nakedly political prosecution. Democrats, who run the Empire State, are apoplectic that President Trump could pardon his former campaign manager, who has been sentenced to 90 months in prison in the Mueller probe.
The federal charges had nothing to do with the rationale for the special counsel's investigation, which involves Russia's interference in the 2016 election and any possible Trump campaign coordination in that effort. But there is no doubt that the convictions and sentences, which resulted from separate but related proceedings in the Eastern District of Virginia and the District of Columbia, are valid. In Washington on Wednesday, Judge Amy Berman Jackson added 43 months of incarceration to the 47-months of imprisonment Judge T.S. Ellis imposed in Alexandria last week.
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