...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.Mueller’s team said in a court filing that Manafort should face a prison term of 235 to 292 months, or between 19 and a half and 24 and a half years, for “serious, longstanding, and bold” financial crimes.
Manafort, 69, could also receive financial penalties totaling more than $50m, according to the filing by Mueller’s prosecutors. His sentence will be decided by federal judge TS Ellis.
The new court filing dealt with Manafort’s convictions in Virginia last year for fraud and other crimes that the veteran political consultant began committing before he joined Trump’s campaign in 2016.
“Manafort acted for more than a decade as if he were above the law, and deprived the federal government and various financial institutions of millions of dollars,” Mueller’s team said. “The sentence here should reflect the seriousness of these crimes, and serve to both deter Manafort and others from engaging in such conduct.”
[...]
The court filing said Manafort was the ringleader of a financial criminal operation that also involved his accountants, Kilimnik and Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy chairman on the Trump campaign. Gates has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators.
[...]
[Judge Amy Berman] Jackson said Manafort had forced Mueller’s investigators “to pull teeth” by withholding facts if he thought he could get away with it, before learning that Mueller’s team actually already knew the truth.
By lying about the witness-tampering conspiracy with Kilimnik, Manafort also seemed to be trying to protect “his Russian conspirator” from legal peril, Jackson said, raising “legitimate questions about where his loyalties lie.”
[...]
Friday’s court filing said Manafort’s “concerted criminality”, even while out on bail and under indictment last year, should be a factor in his Virginia sentence. He also faces sentencing next month in Washington for crimes he admitted in that case.
Guardian
UPDATE:
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