Robert Mueller’s team has accused former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort of witness tampering.
The special counsel in the investigation into alleged collusion between President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign team and Russian officials has said in a court filing that Mr Manafort and an associate “repeatedly” contacted two witnesses and in an effort to sway their testimony.
The longtime foreign political agent was under house arrest at the time of the suspected contact and as a result, Mr Mueller has asked that federal judge Amy Berman Jackson "promptly" reconsider Mr Manafort’s release. If she does, he could be sent to jail instead of remaining on home confinement.
FBI Special Agent Brock Domin, in a declaration filed with Mr Mueller’s motion, said Mr Manafort had attempted to call, text, and send encrypted messages in February 2018 to two people from The Hapsburg Group, a firm he had worked with in the past when promoting the interests of Ukraine in the US.
Agents have recovered telephone and text records from Mr Manafort’s iCloud account as evidence of his contact with the two individuals, Mr Domin said.
Mr Trump’s former campaign manager was indicted in the alleged Russian collusion case on 30 October 2017 on a number of fraud, money laundering, and failure to register as a foreign agent charges but has not pleaded guilty unlike his associate and former campaign deputy Rick Gates.
The witnesses Mr Mueller has said Mr Manafort attempted to influence were not named in the court filing.
Mr Trump has repeatedly said there was no collusion between campaign team members and Russian officials, calling the FBI and parallel Congressional investigations a “witch hunt” on numerous occasions.
Recently, Mr Trump said he has the “absolute right” to pardon himself if needed. The president can issue pardons for federal crimes, but not state or local convictions.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in response to repeated questioning about the president’s comments that “thankfully the president hasn’t done anything wrong and wouldn’t need [a pardon]”.
Mr Manafort's trial in the Washington DC federal court, one of two cases he has been indicted in, is set to begin 17 September.
