WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd August, 2018) Paul Manafort, former chairman of President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, was found guilty on eight counts, the US media reported.
Judge T.S. Ellis declared mistrial on ten other counts because the jury did not reach a consensus on them, NBC news reported from the courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia.
On Tuesday, Manafort was found guilty on five counts of tax return fraud, including filing a false individual tax return in 2010, one count of misreporting foreign bank accounts and two counts of bank fraud.
According to the report, Manafort is facing up to 80 years in prison, including ten years in prison for all tax fraud charges, a maximum of five years for hiding money in foreign banks and maximum of 30 years for each count of bank fraud.
President Donald Trump has not yet commented on the decision as he is on the way to the state of West Virginia to hold a rally.
Manafort's case came to the light as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
Both Russia and Trump have repeatedly denied the allegations of collusion. Trump has characterized the Special Counsels investigation as a witch hunt and pointed out it has not produced evidence of collusion in more than a year of the ongoing probe.
Russian officials also denied interfering in the US election, saying the allegations had been invented to excuse the election loss of a presidential candidate as well as to deflect public attention from actual instances of election fraud, corruption and other pressing issues.
