Author: Kristine Phillips / Source: USA TODAY
The Mueller investigation has linked Paul Manafort to Russia, but what does that mean for Trump and the 2016 presidential campaign? Hannah Gaber, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – It was supposed be the final act in Paul Manafort’s bruising, 17-month odyssey through the criminal justice system.
In the end, Wednesday’s sentencing hearing for the former chairman of President Donald Trump’s campaign only added to the now-convicted felon’s legal misery.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson began her remarks to a packed courtroom by characterizing Manafort as a serial “liar” whose “ongoing contempt” for the law spanned more than a decade. It got worse from there.
Jackson delivered a searing critique of the one-time counselor to Republican presidents, whose high-flying lobbying work paid for expensive clothes and homes, who now is convicted of conspiracy, fraud and plotting to obstruct justice. Then she tacked more than three years onto a four-year prison term he received last week in a related case in Virginia.
And the bad news for Manafort did not stop at the threshold of Jackson’s second-floor courtroom.
Even as Manafort, who now uses a wheelchair because of declining health, was rolled into custody of U.S. Marshals, New York state authorities announced a 16-count indictment charginghim with mortgage fraud and conspiracy, arising from the same conduct prosecuted by federal authorities.
Wednesday’s developments offered a vivid illustration of the danger facing at least some of the high-profile subjects of Russia special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. As Mueller’s inquiry grinds toward its conclusion, federal and state prosecutors are in the midst of their own investigations –many sprawling far beyond the bounds of Russian intervention in the 2016 election. Manafort’s fate on Wednesday suggested the peril they face is real, and at least partly beyond Trump’s control.
The strategically-timed action by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance would put Manafort beyond the reach of a potential pardon, should President Donald Trump choose to set aside the federal convictions against his former aide.
Trump said Wednesday that he felt “very badly” for Manafort, adding that he was not aware of the new charges filed in New York. Trump also did not immediately address a possible pardon.
But as recently as late last year, Trump said he “wouldn’t take (the possibility of a pardon) off the table.”
“Why would I take it off the table,” Trump told The New York Post in November.
Sentenced (again): Paul Manafort sentenced to a total of 7.5 years in prison: ‘It is hard to overstate the number of lies’
Charged (again): Ex-Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, just sentenced to federal prison, faces new charges in N.Y. indictment
In Manafort’s case, the question of such presidential intervention has never been especially distant. Just last month, prosecutor Andrew Weissmann told Jackson that Manafort lied to investigators despite an existing cooperation agreement as a possible way to “augment his chances for a pardon.”
Trump and those around him face a multiplying set of investigations.
In addition to the New York state charges lodged against Manafort, federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating fundraising irregularities involving the Trump Inaugural Committee and hush-money payments made by the president, Donald Trump Jr., and Trump Organization financial chief Allen Weisselberg to women who have claimed affairs with the president.
The Trump Foundation, a charity established by Trump long before he took office, also has been the subject of a separate investigation by the New York Attorney General’s Office. More recently, according to the New York Times, the New York attorney general issued subpoenas to two banks as part of a separate examination of the Trump Organization, the president’s sprawling real estate enterprise.
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