Critics of Mueller’s investigation, including President Trump, have seized upon the Manafort trial as an example of what Mueller hasn’t produced — specifically, anything proving collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Manafort is charged with financial and other crimes that predate the 2016 election.

But experts say the fact that Mueller is farming out things like the [Tony] Podesta, [Vin] Weber and [Gregory] Craig cases — and even the Michael Cohen case, which also went to SDNY — reinforces the idea that Manafort is still seen as a potentially key figure in the Russia collusion case. And that goes for basically anything else Mueller has apparently kept under his purview, up to and including the Seychelles meeting, Erik Prince, George Nader and Roger Stone. Mueller has now shown he’ll hand off multiple things that don’t further that specific aim, and everything that hasn’t been handed off would logically still seem potentially pertinent to the collusion probe.

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So why would Mueller refer the Cohen case (along with Podesta-Weber-Craig) to SDNY but not the Manafort one?

The one obvious difference would seem to be that Manafort was a key figure in the Trump campaign and had existing ties to Russian interests that could conceivably be involved in the case’s future. While Cohen may know derogatory things about Trump — and reportedly is even telling people Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting — Manafort may still be viewed as more of a potential collusion witness.