September 13, 2018 / by emptywheel

 

The EDVA Holdout Juror Has (Thus Far) Saved Paul Manafort $16 Million

I want to pull something from this post into its own post. In that post, I talked about the stakes of a guilty verdict in Paul Manafort’s DC case, which subjects most of the counts to a $30 million forfeiture judgment.

Based on the EDVA indictment, I had thought that all the bank fraud charges in that case were subject to forfeiture. But with Andrew Prokop’s help, have confirmed that just charges 29 and 30 included forfeiture. The Special Counsel’s Office has confirmed that “forfeiture was limited at trial to convictions on counts 29 or 30.”

That means that the one holdout juror may have saved Paul Manafort $16 million. It also raises the stakes of a retrial considerably.

Update: Two more clarifications from SCO. First, “Nothing has changed in the D.C. case” from what was described in the indictment. When I asked about civil forfeiture, they responded, “The case filed in EDVA only references criminal forfeiture.” So here’s the distinction. The Forfeiture section in the EDVA indictment starts,

Pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. P. 32.2, notice is hereby given to the defendants that the United States will seek forfeiture as part of any sentence in accordance with Title 18, United States Code, Section 982(a)(2), in the event of the defendants’ convictions under Counts Twenty-Four through Thirty-Two of this Superseding Indictment.

As SCO notes, 18 USC 982 is just criminal forfeiture.

Whereas the DC indictment cites both 18 USC 981 (Civil) and 982 (Criminal).

Pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. P. 32.2, notice is hereby given to the defendants that the United States will seek forfeiture as part of any sentence in accordance with Title 18, United States Code, Sections 981(a)(1)(C) and 982(a)(1), and Title 28, United States Code, Section 2461(c), in the event of the defendants’ conviction.

 

Copyright © 2018 emptywheel. All rights reserved.
Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/09/13/the-edva-holdout-juror-has-thus-far-saved-paul-manafort-16-million/