DOJ makes its move against Paul Manafort
When the United States government prevented Paul Manafort from taking a flight to the Middle East earlier this year, and it was revealed that he was traveling with a revoked passport, it was fairly clear that the government wasn’t done targeting him. Sure, Donald Trump gave him a very broad pardon. But pardons – particularly overly broad ones – are not absolute.
Now the Department of Justice is indeed making a move against Manafort. It’s going after him for millions of dollars that he hid in offshore accounts years ago. Given that Manafort’s previous legal troubles revealed that he was broke and desperately trying to take out fraudulent loans, there’s a good chance that this DOJ action will bankrupt him. But this could be just the beginning.
ABC News is reporting that the DOJ has specifically stated that Manafort’s pardon does not protect him from this civil action against him. At the least, this establishes that the DOJ does not view Trump-era pardons as absolute. It also makes clear that the DOJ has been diligently working to find ways around those pardons.
The only question now is whether this means the DOJ is working to find a way around Manafort’s pardon in order to hit him with new criminal charges. In any case, it further disproves the popular notion that the “DOJ is doing nothing” to Trump world.
