President Donald Trump’s former campaign aide Paul Manafort was ordered by a federal judge to go to jail on Friday.
The court order comes after special counsel Robert Mueller asked the judge to revoke Manafort’s pretrial release conditions because of his attempt for witness tampering.
Manafort, who was already facing multiple charges related to financial crime, was also accused by Mueller for obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Manafort going to jail ahead of his trial in September is expected to put additional pressure on him to cooperate with the investigators.
According to CNN, Manafort was immediately taken into custody following the ruling and then taken to Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia,
Prosecutors required for U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C., to narrow restrictions on Manafort or send him to jail as result of the allegations of him attempting to convince two potential witnesses to lie to investigators about his lobbying work for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
The two witnesses reported Manafort’s attempt to influence them to Mueller.
In a court filing on Wednesday, prosecutors appeared to have revealed the identities of those witnesses by mistake. The witnesses who were previously only referred to as D1 and D2 are now known as Alan Friedman and Eckart Sager.
The two men worked with the Hapsburg group, a band of former senior European politicians whom Manafort allegedly paid to lobby on behalf of Ukraine.
In a court filing this week, prosecutors also provided two memos containing evidence that Manafort attempted to lobby U.S. lawmakers on behalf of Yanukovych.
On Friday, prosecutors argued that Manafort could continue to engage in an alleged criminal activity if he is not jailed.
Trump over the past year tried to distance himself from Manafort.
On Friday, Trump speaking from the White House insisted that Manafort only worked on the campaign “for a very short period of time.”
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