WASHINGTON – Paul Manafort, the man who helped guide Donald Trump to the presidency, was sentenced to a total of more than seven years in federal prison on Wednesday after a judge added 43 months to the sentence he received in another case last week.
The pair of prison sentences marks the end of Manafort's abrupt transformation from a globe-trotting political operative with mansions and lavish clothing to a frail-looking, wheelchair-bound, gray-haired inmate who, in his own words, had been "humiliated" by his changed circumstances.
Manafort, speaking from a wheelchair, told the judge: "I want to say to you now that I am sorry for what I've done."
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson appeared unpersuaded. She said Manafort had spent much of his career "gaming the system," that he cheated taxpayers so that he could maintain an extravagant lifestyle with "more suits than a man can wear," and that he remained unrepentant despite his apology. "Saying I’m sorry I got caught is not an inspiring plea for leniency."
A federal judge in Virginia sentenced Manafort to 47 months in prison last weekfor a scheme to defraud banks and taxpayers out of millions of dollars.
Jackson added more than three years to that in the related case in Washington, where he faced a maximum of 10 years. She also ordered him to spend three years on federal supervision when he is freed from prison and to pay $6 million in restitution. The nine months he has already spent in jail will count toward his sentence.
Her decision brings Manafort's total prison sentence to 7 ½ years.
"It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the extraordinary amount of money involved," Jackson said. And she blasted him for concealing his activities from the government and for lying to federal investigators after promising to cooperate with them.
"If people don't have the facts, democracy can't work," she said.
Manafort pleaded with Jackson to spare him from the prospect of spending the remainder of his life in federal prison. "Please let me and my wife be together," said Manafort, who turns 70 in less than three weeks.
Jackson began the hearing on a skeptical note. As the hearing began in a packed courtroom Wednesday morning, Jackson told Manafort that his repeated lies to federal investigators – after he promised to cooperate with them – would be relevant to how much time he should serve in prison.
Manafort pleaded guilty to two felonies in Washington as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's nearly two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. It was up to Jackson to decide whether whatever punishment she imposes runs at the same time as the Virginia prison sentence, or whether he must serve them one after the other.
Andrew Weissmann, one of the prosecutors, said Manafort lied for years to government officials by not disclosing his lobbying work in Ukraine, as federal law requires. “He not only kept what he was doing from the American public; he also kept what he was doing from the people he was lobbying.” For years, Weissmann said, Manafort hid off-shore accounts, falsified tax returns and faked loans to disguise income he’d earned from his work in Ukraine.
"Paul Manafort’s upbringing, his education, his means, his opportunities could have led him to lead a life and to be a leading example in this country. At each juncture, though, Mr. Manafort chose to take a different path," Weissmann said. "He engaged in crime again and again."
Manafort's lawyer said he found himself entangled in the high-profile, high-pressure investigation of Russian election interference, even though he was charged with unrelated crimes. Kevin Downing, one of Paul Manafort's defense lawyers, urged Jackson to consider the intense public scrutiny Manafort has faced since he was indicted in 2017.
"But for a short stint as a campaign manager (for President Trump), I don't think we would be here today," Downing said.
Prosecutors have urged Jackson to impose a significant sentence, describing Manafort as a “hardened” criminal who “repeatedly and brazenly violated the law” for more than a decade and whose crimes continued even after his indictment in 2017. Defense attorneys have said a lengthy prison term would likely amount to a life sentence for Manafort. They said Manafort’s crimes do not rise to the organized crimes of drug cartels, and that the charges aren't about “collusion” with Russia, which was the central focus of Mueller's investigation.
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