A federal district-court judge on Thursday granted Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors more time to whether to retry former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort on ten counts of bank fraud, bank-fraud conspiracy, and failing to disclose a foreign bank account.
Manafort, 69, was convicted August 21 on eight counts of tax and bank fraud, but the jury deadlocked on the other ten counts in the indictment, leading Judge T.S. Ellis III to declare a mistrial on those counts. Ellis, who had originally given Mueller’s prosecutors until August 29 to decide whether they want to retry Manafort on the remainder of the charges, gave them an extension of the deadline on Thursday. Prosecutors had asked for the extension a day earlier, arguing that it was difficult to make a decision by the original deadline since they do not know whether Manafort’s team has plans to file any acquittal or appeal motions.
“Because the defendant’s post-trial motions have not been filed or ruled on, the government does not at this time have sufficient information to make an informed decision on whether it will seek retrial of the remaining counts,” prosecutors said in the court filing requesting the extension.
Manafort’s lawyers requested 30 days from his conviction to file any post-trial motions. Ellis has agreed to give prosecutors until a week after the court has ruled on those motions to make their decision about a retrial.
Manafort’s lawyers and Mueller’s will also soon face off in a second federal criminal trial, in which he’s charged with obstruction of justice, money laundering, witness tampering, and neglecting to register as a foreign agent. That trial is set to begin in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. three weeks from now.
IN THE NEWS: ‘[WATCH] Cuomo or Nixon: Who Detests Trump the Most?’