Former Trump Campaign Chairman Sent To Jail

Paul Manafort is heading to jail.

On Friday morning, a Washington, DC, judge ruled that the former Trump campaign chair had violated his conditions for release on house arrest and will be sent to jail as he awaits trial.

“I have struggled with this decision,” Judge Amy Berman Jackson said. But she concluded that couldn’t come up with a release order she could issue that would prevent Manafort from further attempts at witness tampering, which he was indicted for last week. “This is not middle school, I can’t take his cell phone,” she said.

After expressing concern that Manafort seemed “inclined to treat these proceedings as just another marketing exercise,” Jackson said he had “abused the trust” placed in him by the court system and ordered him detained pending trial.

Manafort gave a brief wave before being led out of the courtroom.

It’s the latest blow for Manafort, who’s been the primary focus of charges in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mueller first indicted Manafort in DC last October, added more charges in Virginia this February, and added yet more charges in DC just last week.

Mueller’s most recent accusation is that Manafort and a longtime business associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, tried to tamper with witnesses in his upcoming trial by contacting them and encouraging them to give a false story.

The special counsel’s team said they’d obtained encrypted messaging, call records, and witness testimony to back up this charge, and got a grand jury to indict Manafort and Kilimnik on counts of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice last week. They also said Manafort violated his conditions of release.

Judge Jackson didn’t need to rule on whether Manafort was actually guilty of the new charges. For today’s hearing, she just had to determine whether Mueller had demonstrated probable cause that he had committed crimes. And she concluded that he did — and that he should be detained to await trial as a result.

Manafort is currently facing a combined total of 25 charges spread over two venues. His Virginia trial is currently scheduled to begin on July 25, and his DC trial on September 17.

The charges against Manafort so far don’t explicitly relate to the primary purpose of Mueller’s probe: Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Instead, they focus on Manafort’s lobbying and foreign work for pro-Russia Ukrainian interests prior to the campaign, his finances, and, now, alleged witness tampering. (Manafort has pleaded not guilty on all counts.)

However, it’s widely thought that Mueller’s team is trying to pressure Manafort to “filp,” with the belief that he has important information to the larger Russia probe. A stay in jail will add to that pressure — Manafort has spent years living a high-flying lifestyle and likely won’t find jail a pleasant experience.

This story was originally reported by Vox