Manafort to be released from house arrest: report

A federal judge said Friday that she will release former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who faces charges of money laundering and failure to register as a foreign agent, from house arrest, according to Reuters. 

Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered that Manafort could leave his house arrest after the court previously held him on $10 million and $5 million unsecured bail bonds, which the former lobbyist’s legal team petitioned. 

Jackson said Manafort will still be monitored by GPS and have a curfew. 

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Special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments against Manafort and his associate Richard Gates were the first formal charges filed in his team’s far-reaching probe into possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign in the 2016 presidential campaign. 

Mueller had requested that Manafort’s request be denied, according to court filings, pointing to a draft of an op-ed written with an associate tied to Russian intelligence as evidence that he’s violating orders not to discuss the case.

Friday’s decision comes after Jackson previously indicated she would be willing to amend the conditions of his release if and when they could provide financial assurance to the court that they would not miss critical court appearances. 

Manafort’s charges, prosecutors say, sprang from consulting work with a pro-Russia Ukrainian political party. The former Trump associate allegedly laundered money through foreign banks to hide the consulting work from U.S. authorities. 

The charges against Manafort and Gates were unveiled in late October, the same day Mueller’s team revealed that another former Trump aide, foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, had pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents in the investigation.