In finding former Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort guilty of serious financial crimes, a federal jury on Tuesday not only ratified much of the case offered by prosecutors in a complicated trial; it also made it harder for President Trump to discredit the larger investigation being conducted by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III . This was no “witch hunt.”After being presented with voluminous evidence and testimony about the tens of millions of dollars Manafort made working for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine and his efforts to conceal his income from the U.S. government, the jury convicted the veteran political consultant of five counts of filing false tax returns, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account. That the jury failed to reach a verdict on 10 other counts, causing the judge to declare a mistrial on those charges, is undeniably a disappointment for the prosecution. But it doesn’t alter the seriousness of the crimes of which Manafort was found guilty. If anything, it shows that the jurors approached their responsibility with care and deliberation.

Source: Los Angeles Times August 22, 2018 16:58 UTC