Manafort sentenced to 47 months in prison
ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Paul Manafort was sentenced Thursday to nearly four years in federal prison for cheating banks and the government out of millions of dollars, sparing for now President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman the prospect of being locked up for the rest of his life.
The prison sentence marks the end of a stunning downfall for the longtime political operative who helped elect four Republican presidents, including Trump. He is among a half-dozen people in Trump’s orbit who have been charged as a result of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible cooperation with the Trump campaign.
Manafort, who used his illicit fortune to pay for expensive homes and suits, arrived to hear his sentence in a
green jail jumpsuit emblazoned on the back with the words “Alexandria inmate.” He entered a packed federal courtroom outside Washington in a wheelchair, appearing thin, his hair grayer and holding a cane.
Manafort said he was “humiliated and ashamed.”
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis, who had been critical of Mueller’s prosecutors, imposed the sentence Thursday evening. He said Manafort had committed “serious, very serious crimes,” but he also said that Manafort had “lived an otherwise blameless life and earned the admiration of many.”
In addition to 47 months in prison, Ellis ordered Manafort to pay a $50,000 fine and approximately $24 million in restitution, and to spend an additional three years on federal supervision. Ellis said the nine months Manafort has already spent in jail should count against his total sentence.
Ellis’ decision is not the end for Manafort. He will be sentenced again next week in a related case in Washington where he faces an additional 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy charges for failing to report his lobbying work in Ukraine and tampering with witnesses.
Speaking from his wheelchair because he struggled to stand, Manafort referred repeatedly to his time in solitary confinement waiting to hear his sentence as “painful” and as a “time to reflect on my life and my choices.” He said the past two years “have been the most difficult that my family and I have experienced.”
Ellis seized on Manafort’s failure to “express regret” for his actions. “Your regret should be that you didn’t comply with the law,” he said. “
Still, he imposed a prison sentence considerably below what prosecutors and federal sentencing guidelines suggested would be appropriate. Manafort, 69, faced the prospect of prison for two decades or more; Ellis decision spares him what would likely have amounted to a life sentence.
A jury in Virginia convicted Manafort of eight charges, including bank and tax fraud, after a three-week trial last summer. The case, as well as a related one in Washington, stem from his work as a political consultant in Ukraine before he joined Trump’s campaign in 2016.
Prosecutor Greg Andres ripped into Manafort on Thursday, asserting that that the defendant had made “criminal choices as recently as 2016 and 2017,” referring to additional offenses Manafort committed while under indictment in a related case in Washington.
“Mr. Manafort, himself, made criminal choices and those choices have consequences,” Andres said “Mr. Manafort broke the basic civil covenant in this country: you have to pay your taxes.”
Before he announced the sentence, Ellis made a point of stressing that Manafort “is not before the court on anything having to do with collusion with the Russian government.”