Mueller adds bank fraud to Manafort’s list of alleged criminal conduct

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.

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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.