By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge on Monday denied President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s latest request to loosen the terms of his bail conditions, saying some of the assets he offered to post as collateral are too tied up and cannot be used to meet a $10 million bond obligation.
The denial by Amy Berman Jackson, a U.S. District Court judge for the District of Columbia, means that Manafort will for now continue to remain on house arrest and be required to wear an electronic monitoring device.
Manafort is facing two indictments in different federal courts brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as part of Mueller’s wide-ranging probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Manafort is accused of a wide range of offenses, from conspiring to launder money and failing to register as a foreign agent in connection with his lobbying for the pro-Russia Ukrainian government, to bank fraud and filing false tax returns.
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
But since Manafort’s arrest last October, he has struggled to come up with $10 million in assets he can post as a bond, in exchange for lifting his house arrest conditions.
That is because some of the homes he offered to pledge are already posted as collateral for other mortgage loans, such as his condo in Alexandria, Virginia.
The judge on Monday said he is no longer able to post one of his New York properties, because it is now tied to pending bank fraud charges against him in the other case in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Those bank fraud charges are “not under the jurisdiction of this court and could give rise to remedies outside of this court’s control,” she wrote.
She also said he was not allowed to post funds from a bank account owned by his daughter and son-in-law, Andrea and Christopher Shand.
She noted that the account has “already been seized” and that a co-owner of it is “neither the defendant nor a blood relative of the defendant.”
Jackson said that Manafort can try once again to resubmit a new package that is valued at $10 million and contains unencumbered assets.
Russia has denied meddling in the U.S. election, although American intelligence agencies have unanimously concluded that was the case. President Donald Trump has repeatedly denied there was any collusion between his election campaign and Russia.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
