(NBC) Minutes after Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia imposed a 60-month sentence Wednesday on Donald Trump’s onetime campaign manager Paul Manafort, the Manhattan district attorney’s office added to Manafort’s woes by indicting him in state court.
The state indictment charges 16 counts, including mortgage fraud, falsifying business records and a scheme to defraud.
Manafort may be relying on the president to issue a pardon on the federal conviction. If he is, he should refocus his energies, forget about Trump, and instead rely on his lawyers to challenge the new state indictment based on “double jeopardy” grounds. Unlike the federal pardon, the jeopardy challenge is one he at least has some control over.
