‘Humiliated and ashamed’ Manafort gets light sentence
Paul Manafort, who once served as US President Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, was sentenced to nearly four years in prison yesterday for cheating on his taxes and bank fraud – a spectacular fall for a once high-flying political consultant who told the judge he is now ‘‘humiliated and ashamed’’.
Manafort had faced up to 24 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, but US District Court Judge T S Ellis called that calculation ‘‘excessive’’ and sentenced him instead to 47 months.
Ellis said the sentence was more in line with others for people who had been convicted of similar crimes. ‘‘The government cannot sweep away the history of all these previous sentences’’ for similar crimes, he said.
Ellis noted that he had to consider the entirety of Manafort’s life when issuing a sentence, noting that Manafort had been ‘‘a good friend’’ and a ‘‘generous person’’ but that this ‘‘can’t erase the criminal activity’’. Manafort’s tax crimes, the judge said, were ‘‘a theft of money from everyone who pays taxes’’.
The judge expressed some sympathy for Manafort, a 69-yearold Republican Party consultant who worked on the presidential campaigns of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush.
‘‘He’s lived an otherwise blameless life,’’ Ellis said.
The judged noted that Manafort had no past criminal history and had ‘‘earned the admiration of a number of people’’ who wrote letters to the court supporting him.
Wearing a green prison uniform, Manafort entered the courtroom in a wheelchair.
‘‘The last two years have been the most difficult years for my family and I,’’ Manafort told the judge. ‘‘To say that I feel humiliated and ashamed would be a gross understatement.’’
He asked the judge ‘‘for compassion’’, adding: ‘‘I know it is my conduct that has brought me here.’’
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