Mueller team tells judge: Sentence Manafort soon
Paul Manafort should be sentenced as soon as possible for committing tax and bank fraud, prosecutors with the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election argued Friday in a federal court in Virginia.
“There are no outstanding issues warranting delay,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Uzo Asonye wrote to Alexandria federal Judge T.S. Ellis III, adding that “the government requests that the Court set a new sentencing date as soon as practicable.”
In a filing later Friday, prosecutors did not recommend a precise sentence for Manafort, but they agreed with a calculation by federal probation officials that his crimes deserve a punishment of between 19.5 and 24.5 years.
The filings came the same week a federal judge in Washington concluded that Manafort has been dishonest in his dealings with prosecutors in a related case in the District of Columbia. The former chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign pleaded guilty in the District of Columbia case.
As part of his plea, Manafort agreed to cooperate honestly with special counsel Robert Mueller. After prosecutors accused Manafort of breaking that pledge, Ellis decided to delay his sentencing in Virginia until the issue was resolved.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington concluded that Manafort lied about his interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime aide assessed by the FBI to have ties to Russian intelligence. He also lied about a payment he claimed was a loan and about another, unrelated Justice Department investigation, the judge found.
Also Friday, Jackson barred longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone from making public comments that could influence potential jurors in the criminal case brought by the special counsel in the Russia probe.
Jackson said the gag order was necessary to ensure Stone’s right to a fair trial and “to maintain the dignity and seriousness of the courthouse and these proceedings.” The order is narrowly tailored to comments about his pending case and does not constrain Stone from discussing other topics publicly.
The ruling, which applies to Stone and lawyers on both sides in the case, comes after a string of media appearances by the political consultant since his indictment and arrest last month. In several of those interviews, Stone had blasted Mueller’s investigation as politically motivated and criticized his case as involving only “process crimes.”
Jackson had cited those media appearances in raising the prospect of a gag order, warning Stone at a hearing not to treat his case like a “book tour.”
Lawyers for Stone had argued that any limits on his public comments would infringe on his First Amendment right to free speech. They wrote in a filing last week that Stone’s comments wouldn’t merit a “clear and present danger to a fair trial.” Mueller’s prosecutors had said they wouldn’t oppose a gag order.
Separately, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Friday that she was interviewed by Mueller’s office.
“The president urged me, like he has everyone in the administration, to fully cooperate with the special counsel,” Sanders said in an email. “I was happy to voluntarily sit down with them.”
CNN reported earlier Friday that Mueller’s team had interviewed Sanders, citing sources it didn’t identify, and said it happened about the same time the special counsel interviewed former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. It isn’t clear when either interview took place. CNN said the White House didn’t initially agree to allow Sanders to talk to Mueller, citing one person familiar with the matter.
Sanders didn’t say what the special counsel asked her. Mueller’s spokesman Peter Carr declined to comment.
Sanders is one of the president’s longest-serving aides in the White House, and worked for Trump when he fired former FBI Director James Comey, and when the president helped his son, Donald Trump Jr., draft a statement defending a meeting he held with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign.
Both events have attracted Mueller’s attention as part of an investigation into whether Trump sought to obstruct the probe into his campaign’s ties to Russia.
Information for this article was contributed by Spencer S. Hsu and Rachel Weiner of The Washington Post; by Justin Sink, Chris Strohm, Alyza Sebenius and Shannon Pettypiece of Bloomberg News; and by Eric Tucker and Chad Day of The Associated Press.