Manafort to spend 4 years behind bars

Ex-Trump campaign boss sentence to 47 months for his work with Ukrainians

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for tax and bank fraud related to his work advising Ukrainian politicians, much less than what was called for under sentencing guidelines.

Manafort, sitting in a wheelchair as he deals with complications from gout, had no visible reaction as he heard the 47-month sentence. While that was the longest sentence to date to come from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, it could have been much worse for Manafort. Sentencing guidelines called for a 20-year-term, effectively a lifetime sentence for the 69-year-old.

Manafort has been jailed since June, so he will receive credit for the nine months he has already served. He still faces the possibility of additional time from his sentencing in a separate case in the District of Columbia, where he pleaded guilty to charges related to illegal lobbying.

Before Judge T.S. Ellis III imposed the sentence, Manafort told him that “saying I feel humiliated and ashamed would be a gross understatement”. But he offered no explicit apology, something Ellis noted before issuing his sentence.

Manafort steered Donald Trump’s election efforts during crucial months of the 2016 campaign as Russia sought to meddle in the election through hacking of Democratic email accounts.

He was among the first Trump associates charged in the Mueller investigation and has been a highprofile defendant.

But the charges against Manafort were unrelated to his work on the campaign or the focus of Mueller’s investigation: Whether the Trump campaign co-ordinated with Russians.

A jury last year convicted Manafort on eight counts, concluding that he hid from the IRS millions of dollars he earned from his work in Ukraine.

Manafort’s lawyers argued that their client had engaged in what amounted to a routine tax evasion case, and cited numerous past sentences in which defendants had hidden millions from the IRS and served less than a year in prison.

Prosecutors said Manafort’s conduct was egregious, but Ellis ultimately agreed more with defence lawyers. “These guidelines are quite high,” Ellis said.

Outside court, Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, said his client accepted responsibility for his conduct “and there was absolutely no evidence that Mr Manafort was involved in any collusion with the Government of Russia”.

Prosecutors left the courthouse without making any comment.

Though Manafort hasn’t faced charges related to collusion, he has been seen as one of the most pivotal figures in the Mueller investigation. Prosecutors, for instance, have scrutinised his relationship with Konstantin Kilimnik, a business associate US authorities say is tied to Russian intelligence, and have described a furtive meeting the men had in August 2016 as cutting to the heart of the investigation.

After pleading guilty in the Washington case, Manafort met with investigators for more than 50 hours as part of a requirement to co-operate with the probe. But prosecutors reiterated at yesterday’s hearing that they believe Manafort was evasive and untruthful in his testimony to a grand jury. He spent much of yesterday’s hearing hunched at the shoulders, bearing what appeared to be an air of resignation.

Defence lawyers had argued that Manafort would never have been charged if it were not for Mueller’s probe. At the outset of the trial, even Ellis agreed with that assessment, suggesting Manafort was being prosecuted only to pressure him to “sing” against Trump.

Prosecutors said the Manafort investigation preceded Mueller’s appointment.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani echoed the defence argument yesterday, saying: “I feel terrible about the way Manafort has been treated to this point. I think it’s not American to keep a man in solitary confinement to try to crack him.”

Giuliani said he hadn’t spoken to the President about Manafort’s sentence.

Manafort was convicted of eight felonies related to tax and bank fraud charges for hiding foreign income from his work in Ukraine from the IRS and later inflating his income on bank loan applications.

Prosecutors have said the work in Ukraine was on behalf of politicians who were closely aligned with Russia, though Manafort insisted his work helped those politicians distance themselves from Russia and align with the West.

In arguing for a significant sentence, prosecutor Greg Andres said Manafort still hasn’t accepted responsibility for his misconduct.

“His sentencing positions are replete with blaming others,” Andres said. He also said Manafort still has not provided a full account of his finances for purposes of restitution, a particularly egregious omission given that his crime involved hiding more than US$55 million ($81.3m) in overseas bank accounts to evade paying more than US$6m in federal income taxes.

The lack of certainty about Manafort’s finances complicated the judge’s efforts to impose restitution, but Ellis ultimately ordered that Manafort could be required to pay back up to US$24m.

In the Washington case, Manafort faces up to five years in prison on each of two counts to which he pleaded guilty.

The judge will have the option to impose any sentence there concurrent or consecutive to the sentence imposed by Ellis.