WASHINGTON (CN) - Prosecutors are prepared to dismiss 10 deadlocked charges remaining from former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s bank and tax fraud trial this August, according to a motion filed Wednesady by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team.
In the six-page filing, prosecutor Uzo Asonye informed presiding U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III that the special counsel’s team would be willing to dismiss all of charges if the judge wanted to do so now or at the time of Manafort’s sentencing.
Last week, Ellis filed a motion deeming the special counsel’s delay to respond to the hung counts as “highly unusual.”
“Although some district courts prefer to sentence at a later date – so that the full scope of cooperation is before the court and it can sentence once (as opposed to entertaining a Rule 35 application for reduction of sentence) – it is well within the court’s discretion to require sentencing at an earlier point,” Asonye wrote Wednesday.
“Counsel for Manafort has informed the government that Manafort does not oppose the government’s positions,” he added.
Also on Wednesday, at the federal court in Washington, D.C., attorney Kyle Freeny, also a member of the team which prosecuted Manafort in August, has filed her notice of withdrawal.
Freeny will return to her position within the money laundering division of the Justice Department, according to the special counsel’s office.
The special counsel’s team will continue to shrink as it winds down aspects of its broader probe.
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