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Paul Manafort Moves to Dismiss Mueller Indictment

Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort filed a motion with a court in Virginia to throw out the charges levied by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Sputnik

Manafort was charged with a litany of formal accusations last fall that are primarily related to Manafort's alleged efforts to submit false tax returns, failure to file reports about foreign bank accounts, and commit bank fraud.

The motion filed by Manafort and his legal team on Tuesday argues that the crimes Manafort allegedly committed are invalid because they had essentially nothing to do with Trump colluding with Russians, which is what the Justice Department tasked the special counsel to investigate. 

"Defendant Paul J. Manafort, Jr., by and through counsel, hereby moves to dismiss the superseding indictment," the document said. 

Manafort, Gates Charged With Laundering $30 Million in Ukraine Income

"Unlike the old independent counsel system, the Special Counsel Regulations do not permit a special counsel's jurisdiction to be 'wide in perimeter and fuzzy at the borders,'" attorneys representing Manafort argued. 

In late February, Mueller's team filed a superseding indictment as a follow on to indictment from last fall. The superseding indictment included more charges than the original indictment, specifically that Manafort wired more than 2 million euros to unnamed European politicians while working as a lobbyist for then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. 

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