Manafort news: Trump's former campaign manager pleads not guilty to state mortgage fraud charges

Manafort faces jail even if Trump pardons him in New York State case

(Getty Images)

Donald Trump's imprisoned former campaign manager Paul Manafort has pleaded not guilty of state fraud charges at New York's Supreme Court on Thursday - setting the stage for a double jeopardy legal battle.

Manafort faces 16 counts including mortgage fraud and of falsifying business records.

The 70-year-old is already serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence for misleading the US government about his lucrative foreign lobbying work, hiding millions of dollars from tax authorities and encouraging witnesses to lie on his behalf.

He was transferred last week to a federal prison in New York for his scheduled arraignment before Judge Maxwell Wiley.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr announced the state charges in March, just minutes after Manafort was sentenced in the second of his two federal cases, saying in a statement at the time: "No-one is beyond the law in New York."

Manafort's federal cases were by-products of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian influence on the 2016 election, but a judge who presided over one of them made clear they had nothing to do with Russian election interference, but rather Manafort's years of "gaming the system".

Manafort's indictment is widely viewed as an attempt to ensure that he serves time behind bars - even if Trump pardons him for his federal crimes, since presidential pardons do not extend to state charges.

The president can pardon federal crimes but not state offences.

Trump has said he feels "very badly" for Manafort but had not given any thought to a pardon.

In conjunction with Manafort's federal convictions, the US government seized two of his Manhattan properties and put them up for sale. One of them is listed at $3.6m (£2.8m).

Manafort’s lawyer said he intends to challenge the state case under New York’s strong double jeopardy protections, which bar prosecutors from bringing state charges if a person has received a presidential pardon for federal charges stemming from the same conduct.

“In our views, the laws of New York do not allow the people to do what they did in this case,” Manafort’s lawyer Todd Blanche told reporters after Manafort’s arraignment.