Paul Manafort should be sentenced to up to 24 years in prison, Mueller says

[Rogue Valley]

Paul Manafort should be sentenced to up to 24 years in prison, Mueller says

2/15/19
Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, should be sentenced to up to 24 years in prison, the special counsel Robert Mueller said on Friday. Mueller’s team said in a court filing that Manafort should face a prison term of 235 to 292 months, or between 19 and a half and 24 and a half years, for “serious, longstanding, and bold” financial crimes. Manafort, 69, could also receive financial penalties totaling more than $50m, according to the filing by Mueller’s prosecutors. His sentence will be decided by federal judge TS Ellis. The new court filing dealt with Manafort’s convictions in Virginia last year for fraud and other crimes that the veteran political consultant began committing before he joined Trump’s campaign in 2016. “Manafort acted for more than a decade as if he were above the law, and deprived the federal government and various financial institutions of millions of dollars,” Mueller’s team said. “The sentence here should reflect the seriousness of these crimes, and serve to both deter Manafort and others from engaging in such conduct.”

He was found to have hidden more than $16m in income from US authorities, which allowed him to avoid paying $6m in taxes. He also hid tens of millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts secured $25m in loans from banks through fraud. Manafort had “ample funds” to cover the tax bills he should have paid, the filing said, but “he simply chose not to comply with laws that would reduce his wealth”. Following his convictions, Manafort admitted other crimes in a plea deal to avoid a second trial on other charges in Washington DC. But the deal was scrapped by Mueller after Manafort continued to lie to investigators. Friday’s court filing said Manafort’s “concerted criminality”, even while out on bail and under indictment last year, should be a factor in his Virginia sentence. He also faces sentencing next month in Washington for crimes he admitted in that case. Separately on Friday, the transcript of a hearing held in Manafort’s case in Washington DC on Wednesday was unsealed. The transcript showed judge Amy Berman Jackson explaining why she agreed with Mueller that Manafort had breached his plea deal by lying. Jackson said Manafort had forced Mueller’s investigators “to pull teeth” by withholding facts if he thought he could get away with it, before learning that Mueller’s team actually already knew the truth.

The sentence Manafort receives next month from Judge Any Berman Jackson will probably be ordered to run concurrent with the sentence he receives from Federal Judge TS Ellis for his financial crimes.

I hope Manfort receives the maximum sentences. However, I also believe Trump will pardon his former campaign manager. A presidential pardon can be issued for any reason whatsoever.

Due to Manafort's age (69) I think Trump will go with a pardon along the lines of "for humanitarian reasons" even though there are currently ~30,000 people 65+ incarcerated in the US.