Former Trump campaign official Paul Manafort settles in $3.15 million lawsuit with US government
Rachel Schilke
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The former chairman of former President Donald Trump‘s 2016 campaign will pay the United States $3.15 million after an investigation alleged he had undeclared foreign bank accounts.
Prosecutors from the Justice Department filed a civil case against Paul Manafort, a longtime Republican Party political consultant, in April 2022 after he allegedly failed to disclose over 20 offshore bank accounts in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the United Kingdom, and Cyprus.
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The case was settled on Feb. 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida after the U.S. government said he failed to file federal tax documents with details of the overseas accounts, seeking fines, penalties, and interest payments.
Manafort also faced criminal charges as part of a larger investigation led by Robert Mueller into Trump and his associates’ connections with Russia. He was convicted in 2018 of eight financial crimes, with several relating to political consulting work in Ukraine — which led to his removal from the president’s campaign less than a month after Trump accepted the GOP nomination.
The convicted political consultant was sentenced to more than seven years in prison but was pardoned by Trump in December 2020.
Several other Trump associates have been arrested or convicted of crimes since then. Steve Bannon, a top adviser for Trump’s presidential campaign and later White House chief strategist, was charged with defrauding Trump supporters in a campaign to build the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. He was also pardoned by Trump but faced charges in New York for money laundering and conspiracy.
Bannon later was sentenced to four months in prison for two counts of contempt of Congress after he failed to comply with a subpoena requiring him to testify before the Jan. 6 House select committee in October 2022.
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In December, Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, was convicted on all 17 counts of conspiracy, criminal tax fraud, and falsifying business records. The company’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded guilty to tax fraud, larceny, and conspiracy in August 2022.
Trump also faces an investigation by the Department of Justice over efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and his handling of classified documents after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in August.