Manafort’s Lawsuit Taking Aim at Mueller Is Tossed Out of Court

WASHINGTON — A federal judge Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump, that tried to narrow the authority of the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The judge said that Manafort’s suit, which argued that the special counsel had exceeded his authorities by investigating Manafort’s past business dealings in Ukraine, was “not the appropriate vehicle for taking issue with what a prosecutor has done in the past or where he might be headed in the future.”

The ruling by the judge, Amy Berman Jackson, is a blow to a central part of Manafort’s defense strategy. The suit filed in January — taking direct aim at both Robert Mueller, the special counsel, and Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who appointed him — argued that the charges against him are unrelated to Mueller’s primary task of investigating whether any of Trump’s associates assisted Russia’s campaign to disrupt the election.

Manafort is facing dozens of charges of money laundering, bank fraud, tax evasion and failing to register as a foreign agent in connection to work he did for years on behalf of Viktor F. Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine who was an ally of President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Court documents say that Manafort used millions of dollars he received for the work to fund a lavish lifestyle filled with expensive homes, cars and designer suits.

Manafort has pleaded not guilty. Mueller has made public no evidence that Manafort coordinated with Russia’s attempts in 2016 to influence the U.S. election.

Jackson’s decision allows Mueller’s team to proceed with a planned trial against Manafort, expected to begin this year.

“It is a sound and well-established principle that a court should not exercise its equitable powers to interfere with or enjoin an ongoing criminal investigation when the defendant will have the opportunity to challenge any defects in the prosecution in the trial court or on direct appeal,” Jackson wrote.

Manafort’s legal team is expected to appeal Jackson’s ruling. A lawyer for Manafort, Kevin Downing, did not respond to a request for comment.

The claims in Manafort’s lawsuit echoed allegations made by Trump and his allies, that the special counsel’s team is on a partisan fishing expedition and has exceeded its original Justice Department mandate. Trump repeated this charge Friday, calling the Russia investigation “a total Witch Hunt!”

“MUST END NOW!” he wrote on Twitter.

In his order last year that appointed Mueller, Rosenstein gave the special counsel power to investigate not only the issue of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia but also “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”

Manafort’s defense was dealt another blow in February when Rick Gates, his longtime business associate who joined him to work on the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty to financial fraud related to their work for Yanukovych. Gates is cooperating with the special counsel, potentially giving Mueller’s team a first-person account of the conduct Manafort is accused of in the indictments against him.