https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/433989-nys-political-prosecution-of-manafort-should-scare-us-all
“The New York district attorney did not indict Manafort because he committed mortgage fraud. The DA indicted Manafort because he worked on the Trump campaign and could be pardoned during Trump’s presidency. That’s disgraceful.”
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has indicted Paul Manafort for mortgage fraud and more than a dozen other state felonies. This is a nakedly political prosecution. Democrats, who run the Empire State, are apoplectic that President Trump could pardon his former campaign manager, who has been sentenced to 90 months in prison in the Mueller probe.
The federal charges had nothing to do with the rationale for the special counsel’s investigation, which involves Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and any possible Trump campaign coordination in that effort. But there is no doubt that the convictions and sentences, which resulted from separate but related proceedings in the Eastern District of Virginia and the District of Columbia, are valid. In Washington on Wednesday, Judge Amy Berman Jackson added 43 months of incarceration to the 47-months of imprisonment Judge T.S. Ellis imposed in Alexandria last week.
The New York state charges, announced shortly after Manafort’s second federal sentencing, raise some interesting legal and strategic questions about double jeopardy and pardons.
Most of the time, a federal prosecution is no impediment to a subsequent state prosecution based on the same conduct or charges. Under the so-called dual sovereignty doctrine, there is no double-jeopardy protection because that constitutional safeguard only prevents the same sovereign from prosecuting a person twice for the same offense. In our system, the federal government and the states are deemed to be different sovereigns. It is a dubious proposition since it is supposed to be the people who are sovereign, regardless of whether we’re talking about federal or state government matters.