Former President Trump aide Paul Manafort faced a federal judge yesterday, the second time within a month. More time was tacked onto his sentence, with Manafort having to serve a total of seven and a half years behind bars,
Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was back in court today for sentencing in his second criminal case. Last week in the first, a judge in Virginia sentenced him to nearly four years in prison. Today, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., added another three and a half years on top of that.
The judge in D.C., Amy Berman Jackson, sentenced him on the two charges that he pleaded guilty to. Jackson brushed aside Manafort’s pleas for leniency for misleading the U.S. government about his lucrative foreign lobbying work and for encouraging witnesses to lie on his behalf.
Jackson added three-and-a-half years on top of the nearly four-year sentence Manafort received last week in a separate case in Virginia, though he’ll get credit for nine months already served.
The sentencing hearing was a milestone in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election campaign.
Manafort was convicted of bank and tax fraud in Virginia and pleaded guilty in Washington to two conspiracy counts, each punishable by up to five years in prison.
