‘Humiliated and ashamed’ Manafort gets light sentence
Speaking from his wheelchair, Manafort did not apologise for his crimes, but thanked Ellis for how he had conducted the trial.
‘‘I appreciate the fairness of the trial you conducted,’’ he said. ‘‘My life is professionally and financially in shambles.’’
Manafort said the ‘‘media frenzy’’ surrounding the case had taken a toll on him, but he hoped ‘‘to turn the notoriety into a positive and show who I really am’’.
The worst pain, he said, ‘‘is the pain my family is feeling’’, adding that he drew strength from the ‘‘outpouring of support’’ he had received.
The hearing came just days before Manafort is due to be sentenced on related conspiracy charges in a case in District of Columbia federal court.
Manafort’s trial last year documented his career as an international lobbyist whose profligate spending habits were part of the evidence showing he had cheated the US Internal Revenue Service out of US$6 million by hiding US$16m in income.
Prosecutors painted the former Trump campaign chairman as an incorrigible cheat who should be made to understand the seriousness of his wrongdoing.
Manafort contends that he is mere collateral damage in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 US presidential election.
At the outset of the hearing, Ellis addressed the larger special counsel investigation, saying Manafort was not convicted ‘‘for anything to do with Russian colluding in the presidential election.’’
But he also rejected Manafort’s attorney’s claims that the lack of such evidence undermined the case, saying he had considered that issue at the beginning. ‘‘I concluded that it was legitimate’’ for the special counsel to charge Manafort with financial crimes, he said.
Sentencing guidelines in the Virginia case had called for Manafort to serve between 191⁄2 and 24 years in prison, after a jury found him guilty of eight charges and deadlocked on 10 others.
The first skirmish in the sentencing hearing came when Manafort’s attorneys argued with federal prosecutors over whether he deserved any sentence reduction for ‘‘acceptance of responsibility’’.
Manafort’s attorneys noted that he had spent 50 hours in proffer sessions with the special counsel for his plea agreement in the District of Columbia case.
However, prosecutor Greg Andres argued that those details were not relevant in the Virginia matter, because Manafort chose to fight the Virginia case and because a federal judge in the district found that Manafort lied after he had agreed to co-operate with the government.
Manafort faces another reckoning next week in the case in the district, in which he could be handed a prison term of up to 10 years.
Prosecutors had also urged Ellis to impose a serious fine on Manafort, saying he still owned two properties with US$4 million in equity, and had securities and a life insurance policy worth millions of dollars more.
His attorneys say Manafort is ‘‘truly remorseful’’ for what he did – illegally lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian politicians, hiding the millions he made from taxes in overseas bank accounts, falsifying his finances to get loans when his patrons lost power, and then urging potential witnesses to lie on his behalf when he was caught.
Manafort’s career as a political consultant stretches back decades. He joined the Trump campaign in March 2016, and left it five months later as questions arose about his work for Ukrainian political figures.
– Washington Post France’s most senior cardinal has been convicted of covering up child sexual abuse by a priest, in the latest blow to the Catholic Church. The Archbishop of Lyon, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, was given a six-month suspended prison sentence by a Lyon court yesterday for failing to report allegations that a priest in his diocese had abused boy scouts. Barbarin, 68, once seen as a possible future pope, is the highest-profile Catholic cleric in France to become embroiled in a child abuse case. After the verdict, he said he had submitted his resignation and would have an audience with Pope Francis, who rejected his offer to resign in 2016. The trial only went ahead because the plaintiffs brought the case to court after public prosecutors declined to pursue the matter. The priest involved, Fr Bernard Preynat, faces a trial later this year. He was questioned by church officials as early as 1991, but Barbarin did not suspend him or stop him working with children until 2015. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chosen successor has divided Germans after she described them as ‘‘the most uptight people in the world’’ when a joke she made about gender-neutral lavatories fell flat. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, pictured, launched an attack on political correctness, describing it as ‘‘madness’’. The risque joke at a traditional carnival event last week was slammed by as offensive to transgender people, but rather than apologising, Kramp-Karrenbauer defended it. ‘‘If we’re as uptight as we have been in the last few days, then part of our tradition and culture in Germany is broken, and we should not allow that,’’ she told an audience of party faithful.