The US Department of Justice has filed a civil lawsuit seeking $3 million from former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for failing to report his financial interests in foreign accounts, Reuters reports.
Manafort was convicted on multiple tax evasion and financial fraud charges in 2018, but he received a full pardon from Trump just prior to leaving office in January 2020. Manafort was cited in a Senate Intelligence Committee report, led by Republicans, about Russian interference in the 2016 election, saying Manafort was used by Russians to assist Trump.
“The United States of America brings this action to collect outstanding civil penalties assessed against Defendant Paul J. Manafort for his willful failure to timely report his financial interest in foreign bank accounts,” the Justice Department said in a filing.
Manafort’s lawyer claims that the lawsuit is unnecessary because the lawyer has been trying to resolve the issue for weeks, but the DOJ insisted on prosecuting, because we should trust the word of a lawyer for the guy who took millions of dollars from a Russian-backed corrupt Ukrainian politician, didn’t report the income and then gave the Russians internal Trump campaign polling data.