Judge grants Mueller team’s request for more time to decide Manafort retrial

A federal district court judge on Thursday agreed to give the federal prosecutor with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team more time to decide whether to retry former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on the remaining counts from his trial in Virginia.

Manafort was convicted on eight counts of tax and bank fraud last week, but the judge was forced to rule a mistrial on the remaining 10 counts after the jury failed to come to a consensus.

{mosads}Judge T.S. Ellis III, of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, originally gave prosecutors until Wednesday to decide if they were going to retry Manafort on the charges or dismiss them, but on Wednesday the government asked for more time since Manafort’s defense team had asked for 30 days from the Aug. 21 verdict to file motions for acquittal or appeal.

“Because the defendant’s post-trial motions have not been filed or ruled on, the government does not at this time have sufficient information to make an informed decision on whether it will seek retrial of the remaining counts,” the prosecutors said.

On Thursday, Ellis allowed the extension of the deadline to one week after the court has ruled on the defense team’s post-trial motions.

This developing story will be updated.