(15 Jun 2018) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: apus099197

President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is going to jail.
On Friday, Manafort was ordered into custody after a federal judge revoked his house arrest, citing newly filed obstruction of justice charges. The move by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson made Manafort the first Trump campaign official to be jailed as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
"So this is a first Trump campaign aide to actually be put in jail as part of the special counsel's investigation, said Chad Day, a reporter with The Associated Press.
"Now, of course, this case doesn't deal directly with Russian election interference but still, this is the first time that we've seen someone who was close with Donald Trump during the campaign, as Paul Manafort was, and who actually led the campaign during several key months, and be sent to jail, Day said.  
Already under intense pressure to cooperate with prosecutors in hopes of securing leniency, Manafort now loses the relative freedom he enjoyed while he prepared for two criminal trials in which he faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.
In issuing her ruling, Jackson said she had "struggled" with the decision but she couldn't "turn a blind eye" to his conduct.
"Manafort's attorneys had argued that these were innocuous contacts, and that he actually didn't know that the people he had contacted were witnesses," Day said.
"The prosecution had countered that that's actually not a defense to witness tampering, and that it was, as they said, inconceivable that he didn't know that these people would be people that the prosecution would want to talk with," he said.
A federal grand jury indicted Manafort and a longtime associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, last week on charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Manafort, 69, and Kilimnik are accused of attempting to tamper with witnesses in the case by trying to get them to lie about the nature of their Ukrainian political work. Prosecutors say Manafort and Kilimnik tried to get the two witnesses to say that lobbying work carried out by clandestinely paid former politicians only occurred in Europe and not the U.S., a contention the two witnesses said they knew to be false.
The distinction matters because unregistered foreign lobbying in the U.S. is a crime, while lobbying solely in Europe would be outside the special counsel's jurisdiction.
Manafort also pleaded not guilty to the latest indictment on Friday. Kilimnik, who prosecutors say is living in Russia, did not appear in court. Mueller's team has said that Kilimnik has ties to Russian intelligence agencies, a claim he has previously denied.
Manafort will remain in jail while he awaits trial in both Washington and Virginia over the next few months. He faces several felony charges - including tax evasion, bank fraud, money-laundering conspiracy and acting as an unregistered foreign agent - related to his Ukrainian political work, money he funneled through offshore accounts and loans he took out on property in the U.S.

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