Court ends DA’s push to prosecute Manafort for mortgage fraud

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s quest to prosecute Paul Manafort has come to an end.

A New York Appeals Court said that it would not review a lower court ruling on the case, ending Vance’s push to charge Manafort with mortgage fraud, according to the New York Times.
Former President Trump recently pardoned Manafort after the former campaign chair was convicted in federal court of similar charges in 2018. At the time, he was sentenced to seven and half years in a federal prison.
Vance brought charges against Manafort at the state level in March 2019, stemming from a 2017 investigation into loans Manafort had secured. The DA alleged that Manafort faked business records in order to obtain the loans.

But Vance faced a lofty task in convicting Manafort. In December 2019, a judge said the charges violated double jeopardy rules and discarded them, a ruling that was upheld by a New York appellate court last October. Vance said his office would continue to appeal the ruling even after Trump issued the pardon, but the lower court’s latest ruling has effectively the effort.

The U.S.Constitution prevents someone from being tried twice for the same crime. The only exception is for Federal and state prosecutions for the same conduct, since the two are viewed to be independent of each other, according to the New York Times.

[NYTimes] — Keith Larsen