Paul Manafort, former campaign manager to Donald Trump, was convicted Monday of eight counts of federal crimes. The jury deadlocked on 10 other counts, leading the judge to declare a mistrial on those other charges.
The jury found Manafort guilty on five charges of tax fraud, two charges of bank fraud and one charge of hiding foreign bank accounts. He faces up to 80 years in prison.
The convictions were the first test of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and “may strengthen Mueller’s hand as he continues to investigate possible conspiracy and seeks an interview with the president,” the Washington Post said after the verdict. CNN called the convictions a “major victory for special counsel Robert Mueller.”
A complete acquittal would have provided Trump’s allies with ammunition to shut down the investigation, which some in the GOP have demanded for months.
“As a legal matter, this is a complete and total defeat for Manafort,” tweeted former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. “He will get the same sentence that he would have received if he was convicted on all 18 counts. The number of counts of conviction doesn’t impact federal sentencing.”
What does the Paul Manafort mistrial mean?
Although a jury must be unanimous in its decision to convict, juries are allowed to return partial verdicts. The eight guilty convictions stand as the official result of the trial. Manafort will be sentenced on those eight charges, and his lawyers have a right to appeal.
Prosecutors now will decide if they’ll retry Manafort on the 10 charges on which the jury deadlocked. “In a typical case, prosecutors wouldn’t bother going forward with a second trial on the other 10 counts. And most defendants would plead guilty in the second case,” added Mariotti. “But this is not a typical case.”
Manafort already faces a second trial in Washington, D.C. this September, on charges that he failed to register as a foreign agent of Ukraine and attempted to tamper with witnesses in that case.
Manafort, a longtime Republican operative, was Trump’s campaign manager for five months in 2016. Manafort worked for years to advance Russian interests in Ukraine, largely financed by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Prosecutors said that over a decade, Manafort collected $65 million in foreign bank accounts and concealed it from the U.S. government, then lied to banks about his income in order to obtain loans to maintain his lifestyle.
