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WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Northern Virginia who had sharply criticized the special counsel’s case against Paul Manafort refused on Tuesday to dismiss the charges, clearing the way for Mr. Manafort to stand trial on charges of financial fraud.
Mr. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, has been charged in two jurisdictions with a host of federal crimes as part of the special counsel inquiry into Russia’s influence on the presidential campaign.
In a preliminary hearing last month, Judge T. S. Ellis III challenged the charges of bank fraud and tax evasion against Mr. Manafort, saying he saw no relationship between the case before him and “anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate.”
But in the 31-page opinion issued on Tuesday, the judge said that “upon further review,” it was clear to him that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, had “followed the money paid by pro-Russian officials” to Mr. Manafort — a line of inquiry that fell squarely in his authority.
Judge Ellis continued to express misgivings about special prosecutors in general, saying that he could only hope that Mr. Mueller did not abuse the powers given to him. “Although this case will continue, those involved should be sensitive to the danger unleashed when political disagreements are transformed into partisan prosecutions,” he wrote.
He also wrote, “To provide a special counsel with a large budget and to tell him or her to find crimes allows a special counsel to pursue his or her targets without the usual time and budget constraints facing ordinary prosecutors, encouraging substantial elements of the public to conclude that the special counsel is being deployed as a political weapon.”
Still, he decided that Mr. Mueller’s team had stayed within its mandate in investigating tens of millions of dollars in payments to Mr. Manafort, even though the pattern of financial fraud laid out by prosecutors began in 2006 and the payments came from political forces in Ukraine. The special counsel’s authorization to investigate “any links” between the Trump campaign and the Russian government covered the payments to Mr. Manafort from Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, and his political allies, he ruled.
After Judge Ellis attacked the prosecution’s case in May, President Trump praised him as “very special” and “highly respected.” But Mr. Manafort’s legal challenges so far have fallen short while prosecutors have broadened their cases against him.
A federal judge in Washington revoked Mr. Manafort’s bail this month and ordered him to jail after prosecutors filed new charges of attempted witness tampering.
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