The Special Counsel office’s new sentencing memo makes it clear Paul Manafort’s crimes were “not minor.” And Robert Mueller’s team makes it clear the court should not go lightly on Donald Trump’s former campaign manager. The report states, “For over a decade, Manafort repeatedly and brazenly violated the law. His crimes continued up through the time he was first indicted in Oct. 2017 and remarkably went unabated even after indictment.”
They recommended no specific punishment for those crimes, saying that is the practice of the special counsel. Prosecutors noted that federal guidelines call for a sentence of 17 to 22 years, although under Manafort’s guilty plea in his D.C. case, the statutory maximum he faces is 10. The special counsel said that they may ask for Judge Amy Berman Jackson to impose a sentence that runs consecutive to whatever punishment Manafort is given for related crimes in Virginia federal court.
Friday’s sealed filing, an unredacted version of which was published Saturday, helps pave the way for his sentencings in D.C. and Virginia scheduled for next month, as Robert S. Mueller III begins wrapping up his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
MSNBC producer Kyle Griffen adds:
Prosecutors list the people Manafort “lied to” and decieved: FBI, Mueller’s Office, grand jury, tax preparers, bookkeepers, banks, Treasury Dept., DOJ National Security Division, his own legal counsel, members of Congress, members of the executive branch.
Just 25 pages out of the full 800-page report were released Saturday. Read it here.
