Before you freak out on the judge's questions in Manafort case in VA...
...read this.
<snip>Ellis’ comments, however, do not portend failure for Mueller’s prosecution of Manafort. For one, Mueller’s team has also brought money laundering and illegal-lobbying charges filed against Manafort in a D.C. federal court; while Manafort made similar arguments there about Mueller’s ostensible lack of authority, the D.C. judge seemed much more skeptical of his reasoning than Ellis did. Moreover, Ellis noted that his remarks did not indicate that the charges against Manafort were “illegitimate,” suggesting that perhaps they could be handled more appropriately by the local U.S. attorney’s office.
Yet Ellis’ apparent objections to the special counsel’s prosecution are profoundly flawed and unlikely to be upheld on appeal should he rule in Manafort’s favor. When Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to investigate potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, he licensed Mueller to look into “any matters that arose or may arise directly from” that investigation. Mueller was also licensed to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was clearly an individual “associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” and this case obviously delves into “links” between him and the Russian government. Since that initial appointment order, Rosenstein has also expressly authorized Mueller to investigate any crimes Manafort may have committed “arising out of payments he received from the Ukrainian government.” One of those alleged crimes was bank fraud, which was necessary to launder money—the charges at the heart of Mueller’s prosecution of Manafort in Virginia federal court.<snip>
Link:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/why-a-judge-challenged-muellers-authority-to-charge-manafort.html
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