Manafort had claimed special counsel Robert Mueller's appointment order was too broad, and thus his investigation had overstepped its legal authority.
But Berman Jackson concluded for several reasons that Mueller's investigation and prosecution of Manafort is legal -- and that the special counsel still can maintain some independence while working within the Department of Justice.....
She added that it was appropriate for federal investigators to look into Manafort's business connections in Russia and Ukraine while Mueller's office investigated possible coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
"Who had connections to the Russian government? Who attended meetings on behalf of the campaign?" Berman Jackson wrote. "Given the combination of his prominence within the campaign and his ties to Ukrainian officials supported by and operating out of Russia, as well as to Russian oligarchs, Manafort was an obvious person of interest."
"The Special Counsel would have been remiss to ignore such an obvious potential link between the Trump campaign and the Russian government," she wrote later in the opinion.
