Watch Cy Vance Screw Up The Manafort Case

Honestly, what is this guy's deal?

Paul Manafort (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

Cy Vance is a routine punching bag around Above the Law, mostly because he’s absolutely terrible at his job. He’s the kind of guy running around filling Riker’s with non-violent poor kids while taking meetings with wealthy crooks to discuss how to let them off the hook. He looked across the landscape of the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression and managed to indict the only bank that didn’t commit fraud. Even Andrew Cuomo doesn’t trust him to work his way out of a paper bag.

So it’s no grand surprise that his headline-grabbing effort to tag Paul Manafort with state criminal charges — the kind that presidents can’t pardon — is fraught with disaster. As Jed Shugerman points out, New York has a double jeopardy law that the Manhattan DA’s office seems to have overlooked:

In ignoring the spirit, and possibly the letter, of these double jeopardy provisions, Wednesday’s state charges could result in a damaging setback for New York’s civil liberties and the rule of law.

At least nine, but probably 11 or 12, of the 16 counts seem to substantially overlap with Manafort’s federal conviction in August for defrauding Citizens Bank, leaving just four or five more minor charges pertaining to his involvement with a second bank. It’s unclear whether “Lender #1” in many of Vance’s charges is Citizens Bank, but it sure looks like those charges are related to the Citizens Bank loan. Whether “Lender #1” is Citizens Bank or another bank assisting the same loan, it seems like Vance is trying to prosecute Manafort for the same transaction and the same basic offense for which he was already convicted. (The New York County District Attorney’s office declined to comment on the record.)

Basically, New York has a law that says that jeopardy attaches if someone is convicted of a federal crime for the same acts. The constitution doesn’t mandate this, but New York did defendants a solid. Now, there are potential Manafort crimes that he wasn’t convicted of — thanks to a hung jury — and these could well form the basis of a New York prosecution assuming jurisdiction exists. But the New York indictment seems to be entirely about the crimes that Manafort was already tagged with. If New York were to repeal its double jeopardy law, Shugerman argues — I think correctly — that continuing to go after Manafort on this basis would amount to an ex post facto law.

In the end, the costs of prosecutorial overreach and disrespecting state civil liberties laws could actually be even deeper than the apparent strategic errors of this prosecution. Trump’s investigators and their defenders claim the high ground about the rule of law, and rightly so. But the Manhattan DA cannot claim to defend the rule of law while, in this particular case, seeming to not take Manafort’s civil liberties seriously. The case against Manafort is not just about winning and maximizing punishment. It is about higher principles of fairness and justice. Vance’s office has time to reaffirm those principles by dropping these doubled-up charges.

But this misses the true animus here. Cy Vance just wants to wave his arms and look like he’s doing his part. It doesn’t matter to him that these charges are doomed to undermine the whole cause. He’s just hoping people will forget the times he squelched cases against the Trump family and Harvey Weinstein. Maybe it works out for him. Hopefully not.

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Cy Vance Has a Double Jeopardy Problem [Slate]

Earlier: Cy Vance And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Month
Ivanka And Don Jr. Avoided Indictment The Old-Fashioned Way: By Being Rich
‘Small Enough To Jail’ Looks At The Only Bank Prosecuted Over The Housing Crisis
Which Bank Deserves Criminal Prosecution? The Smallest One, Obviously!
Cy Vance Mad That He’ll Miss Out On Opportunity To Bungle Schneiderman Case


HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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