Trump ex-aide Manafort hit with 3-1/2 more years in prison, new charges

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s former campaign
chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced to about 3-1/2 more years in
prison and was hit with a fresh set of criminal charges in New York
on Wednesday, drawing sympathy from a president who declined to say
whether he would issue a pardon.

Manafort, 69, is due to spend a total of 7-1/2 years behind bars
when the sentence by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson for
crimes related to secret lobbying and witness tampering is combined
with another of just under four years issued by a different judge
in Virginia last Thursday. He has already served nine months of the
sentence.

The veteran Republican operative has received the longest prison
term yet in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of
possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the
2016 presidential election.

It amounts to a sharp fall for a man who earned millions of
dollars as an international political consultant to pro-Russia
politicians in Ukraine and dodged more than $6 million in taxes by
hiding his income in offshore bank accounts.

That money could have been used by the government to help pay
for veterans’ hospitals and other services, Jackson told Manafort,
who was brought into the courtroom in a wheelchair because of a
condition called gout.

“Why? Not to support a family, but to sustain a lifestyle at the
most opulent and extravagant level possible. More houses than one
family can enjoy. More suits than one man can wear,” Jackson said,
referring to Manafort’s previous luxuries.

Just minutes after Jackson read her sentence, the Manhattan
district attorney unveiled a separate indictment charging Manafort
with residential mortgage fraud and other New York state crimes,
which unlike the federal charges cannot be erased by a presidential
pardon. Manafort faces up to 25 years in prison on the three most
serious charges.

“No one is beyond the law in New York,” District Attorney Cyrus
Vance, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Trump, who in November said he had not ruled out giving Manafort
a pardon, on Wednesday said that “I have not even given it a
thought.”

“It’s not something that’s right now in my mind. I do feel badly
for Paul Manafort – that I can tell you,” the Republican president
told reporters at the White House.

Trump has called Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt,” and
Manafort’s lawyers have argued that this case does nothing to prove
that the campaign conspired with Russia. They have noted that the
crimes sending him to prison stem from his lobbying work, not his
time with Trump’s campaign.

“But for a short stint as a campaign manager in a presidential
election, I don’t think we’d be here today,” Manafort lawyer Kevin
Downing told Jackson.

Jackson suggested that the “‘no collusion’ mantra” was simply
aimed at winning a pardon from Trump. Jackson added that Mueller’s
ongoing investigation could yet reveal that Manafort worked with
Russian interests during the campaign.

‘A HARSH LESSON’
Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said Manafort had engaged in an
extensive cover-up that deceived the U.S. government and the
American public, and continued to try to undermine the
investigation even after he pleaded guilty.

“He engaged in crime again and again. He has not learned a harsh
lesson. He has served to undermine, not promote, American ideals,”
Weissmann said.

Manafort, clad in a dark suit and a purple tie instead of the
jail garb he wore to his Virginia sentencing, apologised for his
actions and asked Jackson not to impose any prison time on top of
the 47 months he was given by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis in
Alexandria.

“This case has taken everything from me already – my properties,
my cash, my life insurance, trust accounts for my children and
grandchildren, and even more,” Manafort said.

“Saying ‘I’m sorry I got caught’ is not an inspiring plea for
leniency,” the judge told Manafort.

She also said Manafort’s expression of remorse rang hollow.

“It’s hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of
fraud and the extraordinary amount of money involved,” Jackson
said.

Jackson had ruled on Feb. 13 that Manafort breached his
agreement to cooperate with Mueller’s office by lying to
prosecutors about matters pertinent to the Russia probe including
his interactions with a business partner they have said has ties to
Russian intelligence.

Jackson’s sentence builds on what many legal experts called the
surprisingly lenient sentence from Ellis when Manafort was
sentenced for his August 2018 tax fraud and bank fraud convictions
– far shy of federal sentencing guidelines. Ellis last week praised
Manafort’s “otherwise blameless life.”

The sentence Manafort received from Jackson was well below the
10 years he could have faced for the two criminal counts to which
he pleaded guilty in September 2018.

Jackson showed little sympathy for the argument by Manafort’s
lawyers that his failure to disclose lobbying activity on behalf of
Ukraine was little more than a paperwork error.

In a chaotic scene outside the courthouse, Downing said
Mueller’s two cases against his client had shown “no evidence of
any collusion with Russians,” as protesters called Manafort a
“traitor” and a “liar.”

Mueller is preparing to submit to U.S. Attorney General William
Barr a report on his investigation into whether Trump’s campaign
conspired with Russia and whether Trump has unlawfully sought to
obstruct the probe. Trump has denied collusion and obstruction and
Russia has denied U.S. intelligence findings that it interfered in
the election to boost Trump.

Manafort is one of the 34 people and three companies charged by
Mueller. Others who have pleaded guilty include former campaign
aides Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos, former U.S. national
security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump personal lawyer
Michael Cohen. Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone has pleaded not
guilty.