Special counsel Robert Mueller's team recommended a fine for Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign manager, between $50,000 and $24.4 million. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images Mueller investigation Mueller: Guidelines call for Manafort to get up to 24.5 years in prison for Virginia convictions Prosecutors made a clear reference to Manafort’s time atop Trump’s 2016 campaign, noting his 'repeated misrepresentations to financial institutions were brazen' during that time.

Robert Mueller’s team told a federal judge Friday that federal guidelines call for Paul Manafort to get as long as 24-and-a-half years in prison for his conviction last summer for financial malfeasance.

The special counsel’s submission is the opening move in what will be a two-step sentencing process for the 69-year-old former Trump campaign chairman, who appears to be on track to spend the rest of his life in prison absent a presidential pardon.


A jury in Northern Virginia convicted Manafort after a three-week trial in August on eight felony counts, including filing false tax documents, failing to register foreign bank accounts and bank fraud. A month later, on the eve of another trial in Washington, D.C., Manafort pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in exchange for the special counsel dropping foreign-lobbying and money-laundering charges.

In their 27-page memo filed late Friday, Mueller's team said it concurred with a probation office calculation that federal sentencing guidelines call for Manafort to serve between 19-and-a-half and 24-and-a-half years in prison for the Virginia case alone. The non-binding guidelines also urge a fine between $50,000 and $24.4 million, supervised release of up to five years and forfeitures in the amount of more than $4.4 million for the former Trump campaign chief, prosecutors said.

Manafort’s Virginia case is the only one to date from the special counsel’s office to reach trial. Recapping their victory, the Mueller prosecutors described a series of crimes committed “for no other reason than greed, evidencing his belief that the law does not apply to him.”

They also made a clear reference to Manafort’s time atop Trump’s 2016 campaign, noting his “repeated misrepresentations to financial institutions were brazen, at least some of which were made at a time when he was the subject of significant national attention.”

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“In the end, 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,” the special counsel’s office wrote. “The sentence here should reflect the seriousness of these crimes, and serve to both deter Manafort and others from engaging in such conduct.”

However, while prosecutors repeatedly called for a sentence that would reflect the fact that Manafort committed grave offenses, Mueller’s team chose not to recommend a specific prison term or even to urge that Manafort receive a sentence within the calculated range.

One legal expert said the prosecution seemed to be trying to press for a long sentence for Manafort without publicly arguing that he should spend the rest of his life in prison.

“I think they know a within-guideline sentence is a functional life sentence, and they may not consider that entirely fitting. But if they concede a below-guideline sentence is appropriate, the defense jumps and argues anything more than 8 years would be a life sentence,” said Ohio State University law professor Doug Berman. “So, rather than seem unreasonable or grease a path to a below-guideline sentence, better to hedge and urge a serious sentence.”

Manafort’s sentencing in Virginia has until now been on hold until attorneys in D.C. could hash out a dispute over whether Manafort violated the terms of his plea deal by intentional lying during cooperation sessions with authorities.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington ruled Manafort had indeed purposefully lied about several important subjects, voiding the plea deal and giving Mueller leeway to suggest a more stringent prison sentence.

The judge overseeing the Virginia case, U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III, theoretically could order Manafort to spend up to 80 years in prison for the Virginia case, though federal judges often follow guidelines that call for terms well short of the maximum.

Also still to be determined is how Manafort serves his prison time for both the D.C. and Virginia cases. Under the original plea deal, Mueller had agreed to recommend Manafort serve the D.C. case concurrently with the Virginia sentence.

But with the plea deal now in tatters, Mueller is free to suggest Manafort serve the sentences consecutively.

Manafort’s attorneys in a Friday filing urged Ellis to review all of the recent documents in the D.C. case, including the unredacted hearing transcripts. “The information redacted from the public versions of these documents is critical to the consideration of the issues raised during that litigation,” they wrote.

In the Washington case, Jackson is scheduled to sentence Manafort on March 13.

Manafort agreed in his plea deal to waive his right to an appeal, meaning his only option to get out of prison — he’s been incarcerated since last summer on charges of witness tampering — is a presidential pardon.

Both Democrats and Republicans have both warned the president against taking that step.

But President Donald Trump appears to have not ruled the idea out. He asked his legal team to review pardon scenarios last summer during the Manafort trial and told the New York Post in a November interview that he “wouldn’t take it off the table.”

Mueller’s team has suggested that Manafort was trying to bolster his chances for a pardon when he lied during his cooperation sessions about passing polling data to a longtime aide alleged to have ties to Russian intelligence.

Andrew Weissmann, a top Mueller team associate, said during a closed-door hearing earlier this month that telling the truth would have had “negative consequences in terms of the other motive that Mr. Manafort could have, which is to at least augment his chances for a pardon."

Jackson said in a transcript released Friday that Manafort’s misstatements about his Russian-Ukrainian associate Konstantin Kilimnik raise doubts not only about Manafort’s honesty, but even his allegiance to the U.S.

“This is a problematic attempt to shield his Russian conspirator from liability and it gives rise to legitimate questions about where his loyalties lie,” the judge said. ”Maybe if you took each fact separately and each attempt to dissemble about Kilimnik individually, they might not support a finding of criminality. But there are multiple instances of this and they all follow a pattern.”

