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Comment by bischofs | Hacker News Reader

Interesting that there is nothing here related to the campaign - just some money laundering with Ukraine. Some would argue its outside the relevance of what the special prosecutor was hired for (Russian interference in the election).

Im guessing these charges are designed to scare Manafort into giving up the bigger fish.

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Money laundering, Income tax evasion, Unregistered Foreign Agent Lobbying, and that catchall favorite, False Statements to the government.

Now, this is an indictment, and it's essentially un-rebutted statements from the prosecutor. They could probably indict a ham sandwich if they tried hard enough. OTOH, there are a lot of specific wires listed there, so I'm not sure I'd be calling the prosecutor's bluff.

Speculation:

* This is in no way the end of the investigation. It may be all for Manafort/Gates, but there are more targets out there.

* Most of this is (potentially) pretty clear cut and supported by documentary evidence. There's probably tens of millions in forfeiture and fines, and potentially jail time there.

* This is the opening salvo in negotiations with Manafort/Gates. They probably know things that would be useful to the investigation. They can either help the investigation or face this indictment.

No, when he was hired he was not constrained to only Russian interference. He was specifically instructed to prosecute any wrongdoing encountered while looking into election influencing and possible collusion with the trump campaign.

Probes are given wide latitude, and they are allowed to report on any illegal activity they encounter, which is how the real estate fraud whitewater probe got into perjury over blowjobs.

It might lead to more indictments, but even on its own the immediate indictments are justified. Also, for all you USA expats our there, remember to file your FBARs.

Foreign agents/lobbyists need to be registered, and participating in a political campaign or contributing to a foreign campaign with foreign money to a big no-no.

The fact that he did this and was in a campaign leadership role implies more to come. These are amateur hour mistakes -- the counsel for that campaign was incredibly bad or ignored by the candidate.

Is this the only time they can file indictments? If not, they may have additional charges in the works. I imagine they would have told the judge "this is all we're planning to file" if they didn't have any other investigative work going on, right?

Yeah probably... im not a lawyer so I have no idea.

The mainstream media are mumbling about these charges being filed now because of some concerns about statutes of limitation. Nothing really clear and on the record though.

They can file more charges.

I don't recall the specifics, but there's a 10/31 deadline for IRS filings that sets the date on some tax evasion charges, and the oldest ones were going to lapse.

At this point they have been indicted and charges have been filed (the link this post points to). The steps for an investigation are very straightforward[0], and so now that we're past the charging process, if separate charges are found, it will result in another trial. I think it's pretty rare for simultaneous trials to be going on though, just based on anecdotal experience. It makes sense that prosecutors would want to wait to see the outcome of the first trial before issuing more charges.

[0] https://www.justice.gov/usao/justice-101/steps-federal-crimi...

> so now that we're past the charging process, if separate charges are found, it will result in another trial.

No, a superceding indictment can be filed to add, remove, or update charges. The page you linked to has a good general introduction to the process, but you are mistaken to conclude from it that once an indictment is filed it cannot be altered, and that a separate parallel track would need to be opened up for new charges.

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