Manafort DC sentence: it's happening

The DC case against Manafort was for failure to register as a foreign lobbyist and lying to the FBI about it, as well as conspiring with Russians to obstruct justice.

I'm picking this up from two live-update sites and some Twitter accounts as they post.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson — who can sentence Paul Manafort to a maximum of 10 years today — just outlined how she is sentencing Manafort for two charges today.

[...]

At a recent sealed hearing, Downing's and Jackson's raised voices could be heard outside the courtroom. Jackson even warned Downing, "Don't. Don't," when he tried to raise news coverage of Manafort's Virginia trial. She's also warned him of being smug and overbearing and, most recently, called defense tactics "disingenuous."

[...]

Manafort broke the bail terms Jackson set, flouted the gag order she set, tampered with witnesses while out on bail and then broke the plea agreement she had accepted by lying. The case has dragged on for almost 17 months, with more than 500 filings and numerous denials of Manafort's defense.

Jackson sent Manafort to jail in June.

[...]

"No charge carries the potential maximum sentence the defendant was facing for bank fraud in the other case," Jackson said. (That max was 30 years.)

Judge Jackson said they've got two issues to discuss today:

Manafort's acceptance of responsibility
Whether he had a leadership role in the offense.

[...]

This factors into his sentence recommendations. They've got to settle the numbers on this for legal reasons — even with the 10-year cap — before she determines his actual sentence.

[...]

Jackson made clear she is not handling Manafort's tax and bank fraud crimes, which he was sentenced for last week.

"What's happening today cannot be ... a review or revision of what's happening in another court," Jackson said.

  CNN

That sounds like she intended to avoid those speculations that she'll give him the maximum because Ellis was so easy on him.





Yeah, I guess he wasn't sorry about tax and bank fraud.  He'd do that again.  Most likely, he knew Judge Ellis was going to favor him.

She took up Manafort's request to reconsider her breach of plea determination, related to Rick Gates and the Aug. 2 meeting. She said even though the defense had a point, she still finds the Special Counsel's Office was correct, and that Manafort [...] intentionally gave false statements about his 2016 interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, who was one of his closest business contacts and a Russia-based political operative. Manafort's lawyer pushed back and said their position is that Manafort did accept responsibility.

[...]

"Whether he lied during his cooperation sessions and breached the plea agreement has some relevance," Jackson said.

[...]

Prosecutor Andrew Weissman said that Manafort engaged in criminal conduct that "goes to the heart of the American justice system" — and that all came "after being indicted, while on bail from two federal courts in a high profile matter."

Weissman said Manafort "chose to lie over and over again" to both FBI agents and grand jurors.

[...]

Kevin Downing, one of Paul Manafort's lawyers, brought up the "sealed" part of the Manafort's interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, who was one of his closest business contacts and a Russia-based political operative. Downing again talked about their interactions with the US State Department in Ukraine.

His notice about the foreign lobbying activities "was out there," Downing said.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson asked if only Kilimnik was in touch with State Department in Kiev. Downing said no — Manafort was, too.

Officials "at the highest level" of the US government knew about Manafort's activities, he said.

Does Downing need to talk to the House Intel or Oversight committees?

Paul Manafort will address the court, his lawyers said.

He will "show he is truly sorry for violating the law" his lawyer Kevin Downing said.

He's sorry he didn't get away with it.

Kevin Downing, a lawyer for Paul Manafort, said during arguments "but for" the 2016 election, he doesn't believe they would be in this situation today.

No shit, Sherlock.

Manafort has a prepared statement with him, and he has put on his glasses. He remains seated in his wheelchair.

"Let me be very clear, I accept the responsibility for the acts that caused me to be here today," he said. "While I cannot undo the past, I can assure the future will be very different."

A couple of judges are seeing to that.

Manafort said he is upset with himself "for these personal failures" and said his time in jail over the last nine months have helped him reflect.

"My behavior in the future will be very different. I have already begun to change," he said.

Has he found Jesus?

Paul Manafort spoke about his family during his statement to the judge.

"Your honor, I will be 70 years old in a few weeks," he said, mentioning that his wife in 66 and he is her primary caregiver.

I'm old so don't punish me.

He asked that he not be apart from his wife "longer than the 47 months imposed last week."

"Please let my wife and I be together," he said.

How many people rotting in jails would have liked that consideration?

Judge Amy Berman Jackson spoke directly to Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chairman, about foreign lobbying, saying that he was lying directly to Americans and Congress.

"If the people don't have the facts, democracy doesn't work," she said.

She then moved on to describing the witness tampering offense against Manafort.

Jackson said Manafort "immediately began reaching out to witnesses" involved in Hapsburg group to "remind them" all the work in Europe he did.

"He isn't being straight with me now" about it, she said.

Jackson continued: "He did not plead guilty to contacting witnesses. He pled guilty to conspiring" with his Russian associate Konstantin Kilimnik to contact the witnesses.

[...]

Judge Amy Berman Jackson says she does believe Paul Manafort was sincere today when he spoke about his family and their suffering throughout this ordeal.

Manafort "stepped up in extraordinary ways" to help a niece as a surrogate father. She said this character factors in today's sentencing, too.

Jackson then cited the key parts of Manafort's defense pleading before sentencing, specifically when his defense team wrote, "Mr. Manafort spent his life advancing American ideals and principles."

"There aren't really any exhibits or letters that go along with that," she said, assessing that argument.

[...]

Judge Amy Berman Jackson is now calling out the defense's memo, which stated that the special counsel was never able to charge Russian collusion (this was their approach to the sentencing memo).

"It's hard to understand why an attorney would write that," she said about Manafort's defense team's approach. "No collusion" is "simply a non-sequitur."

[...]

"The defendant's insistence" that this shouldn't have happened to him "is just one more thing that's inconsistent with the notion of any genuine acceptance of responsibility," Jackson said.

[...]

Judge Amy Berman Jackson is now correcting statements made about Paul Manafort's solitary confinement, which was a significant feature of his allocution today.

She said he was in jail not for violating the gag order, but because he broke the bail by breaking the law after his arrest.

Jackson reminded the court he was first sent to Northern Neck Regional Jail, saying she was concerned about how far that jail was, but then Manafort's team asked for that location. Then he was moved to Alexandria because of their complaints.

She said Manafort "realized the tactic had backfired immediately." He was in a self-contained ("VIP") suite in Northern Neck, Jackson added.

[...]

Now he's in protective confinement, not technically solitary. He has a window, radio, newspapers and view of TV. He's released for a few hours a day to walk around and be with other people

"Mr. Manafort, I don't want to belittle or minimize the discomforts of prison for you. It's hard on everyone, young and old, rich or poor," she said.

Jackson noted she hasn't received doctors orders about his health issues.

[...]

"I'm not going to split hairs over whether the word solitary was accurate because he had a room of his own," Jackson said.

She said a "considerable amount of algebra" goes into the calculation of the recommended guidelines for a sentence in this case.

"There are boundaries to what sentence can be imposed," Judge Jackson explained.

[...]

In count 1, Manafort pled guilty to conspiracy with "multiple objects" as Jackson put it, noting his multiple crimes that make up the charge.

In count 2, Manafort pled guilty to obstruction of justice while there were charges pending in this case. The maximum sentence that may be imposed by this court is ten years, she noted due to statutory maximums. "And there is one more restriction on this court," she noted, explaining the that the sentence here the conduct for example of filing false tax returns were part of this court as well as in his Virginia case.

There will be "overlapping sentencing for overlapping counts" Jackson said.

  CBS

Seems to be a slightly different flavor than the CNN report left.

Jackson told the court she'll also have to determine whether Manafort was a leader in the conspiracy.

She addressed Manafort's role in the offense, saying the probation office designated him as a "organizer or leader of a criminal activity."

The defense argues that that standard only applies to criminal organization. Both the defense and the prosecutors decided to rest on their briefs so Judge Jackson said that there is no rules that say that his employees must be "solely" involved in a criminal enterprise.

[...]

On acceptance of responsibility, Judge Jackson spoke to the breech of plea agreement. She listed the many standards for acceptance of responsibility. Briefly though she also spoke to her ruling on breaching the plea agreement and went on to address the new info brought by Rick Gates to the SCO after she ruled Manafort had lied.

She said that information was "irrelevant." She said that she has reviewed it all and said that she still finds that Manafort gave false testimony regarding his interactions with Mr. Kilimnik.

[...]

Judge Jackson said that she can consider conduct beyond what was cited in the offense. "Given his plea and given his sworn admissions" she said she will give him credit for acceptance of responsibility.

This gives Manafort a level of 38 which is a sentencing guideline range 19.4.-24.4 years. This is far beyond the maximum ten years of the statute.

Ummmmm...whoa?

"Everybody's going nuts over this," [defense attorney] Downing lamented. He suggested that there had been a "political motivation" for what he sees as an "out-of-whack" level of attention to the case. Jackson then prompted Downing to say on the record for the court that he doesn't believe the prosecutors were motivated by politics.

[...]

Speaking from his wheelchair, Manafort reiterated the feeling of shame he has, which he mentioned in court last week, but today he added an explicit apology.

"I want to say to you now that I am sorry for what I have done," Manafort said. "While I cannot undo the past, I can assure that the future will be very different."

Manafort continued, "I concede I did not always behave in ways that supported my core values."

I think the way he behaved gives us a good idea what his core values are.

Manafort told the court that the support of friends and family during his case have "had an energizing impact on my life," and he claimed that he is a "different person from the one who came before you" in the fall of 2017.

Yeah, a broken man in a wheelchair without his ostrich jacket.

Jackson said that Manafort was neither "public enemy number one" nor is he a "victim," adding that the case has been marked by a fair amount of

"hyperbole" on both sides. Jackson, speaking to the special counsel's investigation, said that Russian collusion was "not presented" in this case, and therefore not resolved by it, one way or the other.

She lambasted Manafort for his "lies" and "fraud."

"It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the extraordinary amount of money involved" in Manafort's crimes, she said.

[...]

Jackson said Manafort was "hiding the truth of who he represented from policymakers and the public," behaving in a way that "undermines our political discourse and infects our policymaking."

[...]

She said there is "no explanation" from Manafort that would warrant the leniency he has requested.

And even now, she said Manafort still isn't being straight with her. He acted through the proceeding, after his guilty plea, with an "'I'm just gonna manage this, I'm just gonna spin this' attitude," she said.

His "dissembling in this case began with the bond proceedings and it never abated," she told the court. Jackson says Manafort had "contempt for" and "believed he had the right to manipulate these proceedings." She said his lies can't be ignored because "court is one of those places where facts still matter."

"He did plead guilty. He did sit for many sessions," Jackson said. "But the problem is, the defendant's own conduct makes it impossible to assess" how truthful his testimony was.

[...]

Jackson said of Manafort's pre-sentence filings that they stressed the impact of the prosecution on him and his family: "'Look what they've done to me.'"

She saw no sign of remorse prior to his sentencing.

So, most everybody was wrong in their predictions (including attorney Ken White aka Popehat).  While she read him the riot act, she didn't give him the maximum allowable.  He's a lucky man.



He might not be needing a pardon.