Judge rejects Manafort's challenge to Mueller's legitimacy

A federal judge on Tuesday rejected former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's challenge to the authority of special counsel Robert Mueller.

The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III dashes the hopes of many allies of President Donald Trump's that Ellis would deliver a crippling blow to Mueller's office and undermine the legal legitimacy of his appointment.

During oral arguments last month relating to bank and tax fraud charges against Manafort, Ellis skewered the special prosecutor's team, suggesting they were on a crusade aimed at impeaching Trump. The president leaped on the critique, reading it aloud from a stage during a speech in Texas.

“I‘ve been saying that for a long time. It‘s a witch hunt,“ the president said, praising the judge as "really something special, I hear."

Ellis's 31-page written opinion is rife with skepticism about the special counsel mechanism and about Mueller's pursuit of fraud charges against Manafort. But the judge ultimately concluded that Manafort's attorneys had not made a sufficient legal case to justify tossing out his indictment.