Manafort Wants His D.C. Trial Moved To Roanoke, Virginia
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort formally requested Wednesday that his upcoming trial in D.C. be moved to Roanoke, Virginia, in a court filing that claimed, “Nowhere in the country is the bias against Mr. Manafort more apparent than here in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.”
His attorneys previously indicated at a pretrial hearing in D.C. on Tuesday that they were planning to file the request. The judge, U.S. District Amy Berman Jackson appeared skeptical, and the attorneys said they wanted to make the request for the purposes of the record.
A similar request to move Manafort’s recent trial in Alexandria, Virginia was denied.
The Wednesday filing argued that while the Manafort case has received national attention, the coverage “has been most intense in and around Washington, D.C.”
“Mr. Manafort as the first person tried and convicted by the Special Counsel’s Office, has become an unwilling player in the larger drama between Mr. Mueller and President Trump,” the filing said.
Manafort, in his Virginia bank fraud and tax fraud case, was convicted on eight counts, with the jury hung on 10 others. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges he’s facing in D.C., which include money laundering, witness tampering and failure to disclose foreign lobbying. Jury selection in that trial is scheduled begin on September 17.
Read the filing below: