Special counsel Robert Mueller has reported a new criminal accusation against President Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Mueller's team said in a court filing Friday that it learned of "additional criminal conduct" claims against Manafort, including "a series of bank frauds and bank fraud conspiracies" relating to a mortgage on Manafort's property in Fairfax, Va.
The new criminal accusation came in response to a request from Manafort to reconsider the conditions of his bail. Mueller rejected Manafort's proposed bail package in part over the new criminal conduct claims.
Investigators said they learned of the alleged fraud after the deal's terms were set, according to court documents. Manafort was pushing for a new bail package over his indictments for past foreign consulting work.
“The proposed package is deficient in the government’s view, in light of additional criminal conduct that we have learned since the court’s initial bail determination,” the prosecutors wrote in the court filing rejecting the bail proposal.
Manafort offered the Fairfax home as collateral in the bail agreement. Investigators said they found "substantial evidence" that Manafort had moved to obtain a $9 million mortgage for the home "through a series of false and fraudulent representations to The Federal Savings Bank."
The court filing does not include any new criminal charges against Manafort, who was charged alongside his business associate Richard Gates in October for conspiracy against the U.S. and money laundering in relation to their foreign consulting work for a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine.
Manafort previously filed a lawsuit in January against the federal prosecutors claiming that the charges against him from the probe were outside of Mueller's purview investigating Russia's election interference, since the consulting work in question took place before he joined the Trump campaign.
Mueller bombshell: 13 Russian 'troll factory' staffers charged with allegedly meddling in US presidential election
Ruskies stole citizen IDs to spread discord – indictment
By Shaun Nichols in San Francisco 16 Feb 2018 at 20:03
Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor investigating foreign agents tampering with the 2016 US presidential election, has criminally charged 13 Russian nationals with conspiring against the United States.
A 37-page grand jury indictment, revealed today, named staff at the Internet Research Agency troll factory as conspirators in a plan to "sow discord," and tip the White House race in favor of Donald Trump.
The Russians are accused of stealing or fabricating Americans' identities to open PayPal accounts to purchase controversial attack ads. The agency also created online profiles with hundreds of thousands of followers to spread divisive messages, and coordinated political protests and campaign events, all while posing as legit Americans, it is alleged.
The trolls would use email addresses such as staceyredneck@gmail.com in organizing their efforts to tear the people of the United States apart, it is claimed. ...
Much more
... The charges are the first formal acknowledgement from Mueller of what many had already come to suspect and accept: that troll factories in Russia, with the Kremlin's blessing, had formed in the run-up to the 2016 elections to sow chaos in the US and stir up fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Both Facebook and Twitter fessed up to taking money from the groups to run ads and promoted content, and Twitter has since admitted that thousands of Russian-controlled bot accounts were spreading propaganda aimed at Americans. ®
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
