By Mark Swanson
Newsmax
May 4, 2018
A federal judge challenged special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecution of Paul Manafort, scolding prosecutors Friday for squeezing the former campaign manager to get information that would help impeach President Donald Trump.
“The vernacular is, ‘to sing,'” Judge T.S. Ellis III, a Ronald Reagan appointee, told prosecutors in the Alexandria, Virginia, courtroom.
Ellis was hearing motion-to-dismiss arguments in the Virginia case, in which Mueller’s team has charged Manafort with filing false income tax returns, failing to report foreign bank accounts and bank fraud. The charges relate to work he did for the government of Ukraine. “You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” Ellis said during the hearing. “You really care about getting information Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump and lead to his prosecution or impeachment.”