The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Manafort is sentenced to 3½ more years in prison
Second sentence closes out special counsel’s highest-profile prosecution.
WASHINGTON — Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman who was sentenced last week to nearly four years in prison, was ordered on Wednesday to serve an additional 3½ years for conspiracy, closing out the special counsel’s highest-profile prosecution.
What happened
Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Federal District Court in Washington sentenced Manafort, 69, on two conspiracy counts that encompassed a host of crimes, including money-laundering, obstruction of justice and failing to disclose lobbying work that earned him tens of millions of dollars over more than a decade.
“It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the amount of money involved,” Jackson said of Manafort’s case. She added, “A significant portion of his career has been spent gaming the system.”
The sentence
Each charge carried a maximum of five years. But Jackson noted that one count was closely tied to the same bank and tax fraud scheme that a federal judge in Virginia had sentenced Manafort for last week. Under sentencing guidelines, she said, those punishments should largely overlap, not be piled on top of each other.
Manafort asked the judge not to add to his time behind bars. “This case has taken everything from me, already,” he said, running through a list of his financial assets that now belong to the government. “Please let my wife and I be together,” he added, speaking from a wheelchair because gout has made it difficult for him to stand.
The judge ruled earlier that Manafort breached his plea agreement by lying, but prosecutors have not publicly disclosed why they consider those lies important, saying they wanted to protect an open investigation.
In another oddity, Manafort’s prosecution was divided into two cases — the one before Jackson, and a related case overseen by Judge T.S. Ellis of Federal District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. Last week, Ellis sentenced Manafort to 47 months in prison for eight felony counts of tax evasion, bank fraud and failure to disclose a foreign bank account.
What’s next
Hanging over the entire case has been the chance that President Donald Trump could pardon Manafort.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Monday the president will “make a decision when he is ready.”