More time, trouble for Paul Manafort
Judge adds 31⁄2 years to sentence; now, New York files its own charges
WASHINGTON – Paul Manafort, the man who helped guide Donald Trump to the presidency, was sentenced to a total of more than seven years in federal prison Wednesday after a federal judge added 43 months to the punishment he received in another case last week.
The pair of prison sentences marks the end of Manafort’s abrupt transformation from a globe-trotting political operative with mansions and lavish clothing to a frail-looking, gray-haired inmate in a wheelchair who, in his own words, had been “humiliated” by his changed circumstances.
Manafort, speaking from his wheelchair in the packed courtroom, told the judge: “I want to say to you now that I am sorry for what I’ve done.”
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson appeared unpersuaded and delivered a withering rebuke from the bench. She said Manafort had spent much of his career “gaming the system,” that he cheated taxpayers so he could maintain an extravagant lifestyle, and that he remained unrepentant. “Saying I’m sorry I got caught is not an inspiring plea for leniency,” she said.
The case, as well as a related one in Virginia, centered on Manafort’s decade-long work as a lobbyist in Ukraine and resulted from special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
A federal judge in Virginia sentenced Manafort to 47 months in prison last week for a scheme to defraud banks and taxpayers out of millions of dollars he had amassed through his illicit lobbying. Jackson added more than three years to that in the related case in Washington, where he faced a maximum of 10 years after pleading guilty to conspiracy charges of not disclosing his lobbying work and tampering with witnesses. The nine months he has spent in jail since June will count toward his sentence.
Jackson’s decision brings Manafort’s total prison sentence to 71⁄2 years.
“It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the extraordinary amount of money involved,” Jackson said.
Trump said Wednesday that he felt “very badly” for Manafort. Speaking to reporters during a briefing about drug smuggling, Trump said he had “not thought about” a pardon for his former campaign chief.
Manafort’s legal problems are far from over. Minutes after Jackson finished sentencing Manafort, state prosecutors in New York announced they had filed charges of their own, including counts of mortgage fraud and conspiracy. Because the new charges were filed by state authorities, they are beyond the reach of a pardon from Trump.
Jackson said Manafort’s crimes were aimed at propping up an “opulent” lifestyle that included “more homes than one family can occupy and more suits than one man can wear.” And she blasted Manafort for concealing his activities from the government and for lying to federal investigators after promising to cooperate with them.
“If people don’t have the facts, democracy can’t work,” she said.
Manafort pleaded with Jackson to spare him from the prospect of spending the rest of his life in federal prison. “Please let me and my wife be together,” said Manafort, who turns 70 in less than three weeks.
Prosecutors urged Jackson to impose a significant sentence, describing Manafort as a “hardened” criminal who “repeatedly and brazenly violated the law” for more than a decade and whose crimes continued even after his indictment in 2017.
“He not only kept what he was doing from the American public; he also kept what he was doing from the people he was lobbying,” Andrew Weissmann, one of the prosecutors, said.
For years, Weissmann said, Manafort hid offshore accounts, falsified tax returns and faked loans to disguise income he had earned in Ukraine.
“Paul Manafort’s upbringing, his education, his means, his opportunities could have led him to lead a life and to be a leading example in this country. At each juncture, though, Mr. Manafort chose to take a different path,” Weissmann said. “He engaged in crime again and again.”
Defense attorneys asked for leniency, saying a lengthy term would likely amount to a life sentence. They said that Manafort’s crimes did not rise to the organized crimes of drug cartels and that the charges weren’t about “collusion” with Russia, which was the focus of Mueller’s investigation.
After the hearing, Manafort’s lawyers castigated Jackson, suggesting the sentence was excessive and her personal rebuke unnecessary.
“The judge displayed a level of callousness and hostility that I have not seen before,” Downing said outside the courthouse, where he was partially shouted down by protesters.