Politics

Mueller hits former Trump campaign officials Manafort, Gates with new indictment

Key Points
  • Special counsel Robert Mueller's office unveiled a raft of new criminal charges against former Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort and Rick Gates on Thursday.
  • The new charges are related to alleged false tax returns, bank fraud and failure to report foreign financial accounts.
  • Mueller is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign with Russians.
Paul Manafort and Richard Gates arrive at the Prettyman Federal Courthouse for a bail hearing November 6, 2017 in Washington, DC.
Getty Images

Special counsel Robert Mueller's office on Thursday disclosed a new set of criminal charges — including tax and bank fraud counts — filed against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his business associate Rick Gates.

The 32-count indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in Virginia contains 25 brand new criminal charges against Manafort, 68, and Gates, 45, who also had been a top Trump campaign official.

Seven of the charges in the new indictment replicate counts that were already pending in the earlier indictment lodged against both men in Washington federal court last October.

The charges stem from alleged conduct that does not relate to work that Manafort and Gates performed for the Trump campaign. However, some of their alleged crimes occurred while they were working for Trump and afterward.

A spokesman insisted that Manafort is innocent of the charges. "The new allegations against Mr. Manafort, once again, have nothing to do with Russia and 2016 election interference/collusion," the spokesman said. "Mr. Manafort is confident that he will be acquitted and violations of his constitutional rights will be remedied."

Manafort is now accused of laundering $30 million worth of money through offshore accounts, up from the original allegation which accused him of laundering $18 million. Gates is still accused of launder the same amount as in the original indictment, $3 million.

Mueller investigating whether Paul Manafort offered banker a job in Trump White House in exchange for loans
VIDEO0:5400:54
Mueller investigating whether Paul Manafort offered banker a job in Trump White House in exchange for loans

Mueller's office in a court filing said they obtained the indictment in Virginia because a number of the charges could not have been lodged in Washington without the defendants' approval.

The charges filed Thursday include:

• 16 counts related to false individual income tax returns

• seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts

• five counts of bank fraud conspiracy

• four counts of bank fraud

As in the first indictment, the new charges stem from lobbying and consulting work that Manafort and Gates did on behalf of the government of Ukraine and its then-president Viktor Yanukovych.

As part of the new indictment, prosecutors claim that after Manafort and Gates saw their income dwindle from 2015 to at least January 2017 as a result of the loss of Yanukovych as a client, they "extracted money" from Manafort's U.S. real estate by using that property to obtain loans from multiple financial institutions.

"Manafort and Gates fraudulently secured more than twenty million dollars in loans by falsely inflating Manafort's and his company's income and by failing to disclose existing debt in order to qualify for the loans," the indictment says.

Mueller's office declined to comment. A lawyer for Gates did not immediately return a request for comment from CNBC.

Additional reporting by Kevin Breuninger and Jacob Pramuk