Manafort to fight state charges on double jeopardy

NEW YORK -- A frail Paul Manafort shuffled into court Thursday in handcuffs and prison garb and pleaded not guilty to New York state mortgage fraud charges potentially keeping him behind bars even if President Donald Trump pardons him for federal crimes uncovered during the probe of Russian election meddling.

A lawyer for Manafort, the former 2016 Trump campaign chairman turned twice-convicted federal inmate, said he intends to challenge the state case under New York's strong double jeopardy protections. State law prohibits prosecutors from bringing state charges against a person who has previously been charged for the same conduct under federal law.

"In our views, the laws of New York do not allow the people to do what they did in this case," lawyer Todd Blanche told reporters after Manafort's arraignment.

Manafort, wearing a blue prison jumpsuit, walked with a limp as court officers led him down a public hall to and from the courtroom. He had been transferred last week to a federal detention center in New York for his arraignment in the state case.

Manafort, 70, remained seated as he entered his plea and had to be helped out of his chair when taken out of the courtroom. He used a wheelchair at his last federal sentencing in March because of gout.

Manafort is already serving a 7 1/2-year prison sentence for misleading the U.S. government about his lucrative foreign lobbying work, hiding millions of dollars from tax authorities and encouraging witnesses to lie on his behalf.

He is due back in court in the state case Oct. 9. His lawyers asked if he could skip all pretrial hearings, but Judge Maxwell Wiley said he will decide on a hearing-by-hearing basis.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. announced the state charges in March, just minutes after Manafort was sentenced in the second of his two federal cases, saying in a statement at the time: "No one is beyond the law in New York."

Manafort's federal cases were byproducts of special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian influence on the 2016 election, but a judge who presided over one of them made clear they had nothing to do with Russian election interference, but rather Manafort's years of "gaming the system."

The 16-count New York indictment alleges Manafort gave false and misleading information in applying for residential mortgage loans, starting in 2015 and continuing until three days before Trump's inauguration in 2017. He is also charged with falsifying business records and conspiracy.