Manafort defense blasts indictment as based on 'tenuous legal theory'

[jberryhill]

9. The point is more subtle than that

"Money laundering" is not some sort of stand-alone thing. The activity of "money laundering" is obscuring the origin of money that was received as part of the commission of a crime.

Manafort received a lot of payments to his foreign companies for lobbying work. That is not per se illegal. The "crime" on which the money laundering charge is premised is his failure to register as a foreign lobbyist. Hence, having committed that violation, the complaint casts the payments as having been received pursuant to the commission of that violation.

So, one of the obvious lines of defense is to attack the FARA requirements as vague in relation to whether and when FARA is implicated by one's activities. If you can kick the legs out from under the alleged FARA violation then the "money laundering" allegation, as currently framed to hinge on the FARA violation, does not have a "crime" to which to attach itself.