Prosecutors call Manafort ‘hardened’ and bold criminal

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort “repeatedly and brazenly violated the law” and shows a “hardened adherence to committing crimes,” prosecutors told a Washington federal judge.

They recommended no specific punishment for those crimes, saying that is the practice of the special counsel. Prosecutors noted that federal guidelines call for a sentence of 17 to 22 years, although under Manafort’s guilty plea in his Washington case, the statutory maximum he faces is 10. The special counsel said that they may ask for Judge Amy Berman Jackson to impose a sentence that runs consecutive to whatever punishment Manafort is given for related crimes in Virginia federal court.

Friday’s sealed filing, an unredacted version of which was published Saturday, helps pave the way for his sentencings in Washington and Virginia scheduled for next month, as Robert Mueller begins wrapping up his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

As part of his plea deal in September, Manafort, 69, acknowledged he was guilty of everything he was accused of both in Washington and Virginia: making millions as an unregistered lobbyist for Ukrainian politicians, hiding that money to avoid paying taxes, defrauding banks to pay his debts when his oligarch patrons fell out of power, and lying to cover up his crimes while trying to persuade witnesses to do the same.

But when he appears in front of Jackson on March 13, he will already have been sentenced for related crimes in federal court in Alexandria, Va., barring any change in the scheduling as now set for those hearings. Jackson could make the sentence she imposes run during or after his Virginia prison term.

In Virginia, where Manafort was found guilty of bank and tax fraud at trial, there is no upper limit to his sentence.

In Alexandria, prosecutors have also asked only for a “serious” sentence. Federal guidelines in that case call for him to spend roughly 19 to 24 years in prison.