He’s not even being charged with that (which is a non-existent offense anyway), but with trying to contact a “witness” (I think it was before he even knew the person was a witness, judging by the dates).
In other words, like all the other things, it’s a “process crime,” which is now used by the FBI and the DOJ to get somebody on something just so they can say they did.
I’m no fan of Manafort, but this is ridiculous. As you point out, he was hired for a specific job with no relationship to Russia, foreign policy or anything outside of party politics, but they’re determined to destroy anybody who had anything to do with Trump.
Manafort knows everyone who is anyone, so he'd have to become a hermit to avoid any risk. I know he was on house arrest while awaiting trial, so Mueller is trying to up the pressure by revoking his bail and jailing him. I would assume that a judge told Manafort to avoid contact with people who were involved as a condition of his bail, but what are the practical limits of that when Mueller has such an open-ended mandate?
-PJ