WASHINGTON _ The judge overseeing the money laundering trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said there had been too many secret filings in the high-profile criminal case and said she would make several of them public.
"People are overdoing it just a little bit," U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said.
Jackson made her remarks Wednesday in a pretrial hearing to review Manafort's bail package and legal representation for Manafort's co-defendant, Rick Gates. Shortly after convening the hearing, she ordered reporters and other members of the public to leave her Washington courtroom so she could discuss Manafort's private financial matters.
The judge said she would also discuss a request by Gates' attorneys to withdraw from the case. Before sealing the courtroom, a prominent Washington defense lawyer, Tom Green, sat in the back of the room. CNN has reported that Green was preparing to represent Gates.
During the sealed hearing, Green huddled in the hallway with Gates' lawyers, who want to leave the case and then entered the courtroom with them.
Manafort, who was Donald Trump's 2016 campaign chairman, and Gates, his deputy, are accused of failing to register as agents in the U.S. for political consulting they did for Ukraine and pro-Russian politicians there, conspiring to launder millions of dollars, and hiding offshore bank accounts. Manafort allegedly laundered money to buy houses, cars, clothes and landscaping services. Both men deny wrongdoing.
