Manafort defense targets Mueller prosecutor Weissmann
By JOSH GERSTEIN 05/21/2018 09:45 PM EDT
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's defense is going after one of special counsel Robert Mueller's top deputies in a bid to persuade a federal judge to order a hearing into leaks to the media.
In a court filing Monday night, Manafort's attorneys singled out prosecutor Andrew Weissmann over a meeting he attended with The Associated Press in April 2017 about a month before Mueller was appointed to take over the Trump-Russia investigation. At the time, Weissmann headed the fraud section of the Justice Department's Criminal Division.
The precise nature of the session with the AP reporters is unclear, but it came a day before the news agency reported that financial records showed Manafort actually received payments attributed to him in a so-called black ledger of secret Ukrainian government compensation.
Manafort's defense attorneys suggested the episode makes Weissmann a logical suspect as a source for anonymously sourced press accounts about the Manafort probe.
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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/21/manafort-targets-mueller-prosecutor-weissmann-602652