Manafort Can't Be Prosecuted in New York After Trump Pardon, Court Rules
Source: New York Times
The Manhattan district attorney’s attempt to prosecute former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman was dealt a final blow when New York’s highest court said quietly last week it would not review lower court rulings on the case. The court’s decision brings to an end the district attorney’s quest to ensure that the campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, will face state charges for mortgage fraud and other state felonies, crimes similar to those for which he was convicted in federal court and then pardoned by Mr. Trump.
When the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, first brought charges against Mr. Manafort in March 2019, it was widely understood that he was doing so to make sure that Mr. Manafort would face prosecution even if Mr. Trump decided to pardon him. At the time, Mr. Manafort was serving a sentence of seven and a half years in a Pennsylvania federal prison after being convicted at a 2018 financial fraud trial by prosecutors working for the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
In October, a New York appeals court found that Mr. Vance’s efforts to try Mr. Manafort violated the state’s double jeopardy law. Mr. Vance took the case to the Court of Appeals. Then, in December, Mr. Trump did pardon Mr. Manafort, 71, who had been released to home confinement in Northern Virginia, after his lawyers argued that he was at risk of contracting the coronavirus.
A lawyer for Mr. Manafort, Todd Blanche, said that he had received the high court’s one-paragraph decision Monday and that he was happy with the ruling. “Mr. Manafort is similarly pleased with the result,” he said. A spokesman for Mr. Vance’s office declined to comment. The charges that Mr. Vance brought against Mr. Manafort were the result of an investigation, started in 2017, into loans the campaign chairman had received. Mr. Vance ultimately accused Mr. Manafort of having falsified business records in order to obtain the loans.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/nyregion/manafort-vance-ny-indictment.html
I know NY closed a loophole but I suppose this was due to the timing of the original suit before the loophole was closed?
By Chandelis Duster, CNN
Published 2:17 PM EDT, Wed October 16, 2019
(CNN) — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation on Wednesday that will allow the state to prosecute people who have received a presidential pardon for the same offense, which could potentially affect associates of President Donald Trump. The bill, which was passed by the state legislature in May, closes New York’s “double jeopardy” legal loophole that protected individuals who are pardoned by a president for federal crimes from being prosecuted at the state level for the same offense. The change goes into effect immediately and applies to future and past offenses, provided a plea has not been entered and a person has not already been tried.
“No one is above the law and New York will not turn a blind eye to criminality, no matter who seeks to protect them,” Cuomo, a Democrat, said in a statement. “The closure of this egregious loophole gives prosecutors the ability to stand up against any abuse of power, and helps ensure that no politically motivated, self-serving action is sanctioned under law.” The new law potentially short-circuits Trump’s ability to shield his associates from prosecution, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was sentenced to more than seven years in prison on financial crimes stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 campaign.
The New York Attorney General’s office, which has vowed to investigate Trump and his business dealings, said in a release the new law establishes an additional exception “that would ensure that New York’s criminal laws continue to apply to individuals who receive a presidential pardon and also have a connection to the president either by family or close professional relationship, or through a narrow set of other criteria.”
“This critical new law closes a gaping loophole that could have allowed any president to abuse the presidential pardon power by unfairly granting a pardon to a family member or close associate and possibly allow that individual to evade justice altogether,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “No one is above the law, and this commonsense measure will provide a reasonable and necessary check on presidential power today and for all presidents to come.”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/16/politics/andrew-cuomo-double-jeopardy-law/index.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
the technicality is the trying of a case in the state for the same charges that had been done in federal court. And the state appeals (lower) court had thrown it out, and an appeal to NY's highest court resulted in it being refused a hearing (meaning the lower court ruling stands).
This was apparently due to what I mentioned in the OP about the "timing" of NY's new "double jeopardy" law and I was right (from the OP link) -
In 2019, the state legislature in New York passed a measure that lawmakers argued was necessary in order to check Mr. Trump’s pardon power and to ensure that his associates were not permitted to escape justice. The law, signed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in October 2019, allows state prosecutors to pursue charges against individuals who have been granted presidential pardons for similar crimes.
State Senator Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat and former federal prosecutor who sponsored the bill, said that the Manafort case drove home the need for the legislation.
“It really underscored why we had to take legislative action that we did so that states can pursue their own path even if there is a federal pardon,” he said. The law would make it easier for state prosecutors to pursue those on Mr. Trump’s pardon list.
The law passed too late to apply to Mr. Manafort’s case. The result, Mr. Kaminsky said, was that Mr. Vance’s office had to contort itself to try to show that the acts that Mr. Manafort had been charged with in federal court were not the same as those they were pursuing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/nyregion/manafort-vance-ny-indictment.html
I remember following the NY state legislature's working on that bill but it seemed (IMHO) that they were really dragging it out and by the time they finally passed it and Cuomo signed it, it was too late for it to apply to Manafort.
The article does suggest that it COULD apply to Bannon however, since he hasn't been tried for anything yet!
