Transcript for Paul Manafort sentenced to 47 months in prison

So I thought the headline about Paul manafort's sentencing had a typo in it. Did you read about this? No such luck because a judge sentenced him to just four years in jail. He was supposed to get 24 years for defrauding banks and the government and failing to pay millions in taxes from a political thing he did and there are countless examples of people serving more time for less serious crimes. For instance, there's a guy in 2009, the same judge sentenced -- it was a black democratic congressman, William J. Jefferson, to 13 years in a corruption and bribery case, the longest sentence ever to give to a congressman. Is there a little problem here with race, do you think, because T.S. Ellis sounds like trump supporter Ellis to me. I thought this was so ridiculous. I was so angry about it yesterday. That congressman you just talked about, he got convicted for having $90,000 stuck in his freezer in foil and went to jail for 13 years. Paul manafort has defaudedded U.S. Taxpayer, all of us, for millions and millions of dollars. He had been sharing campaign information with Russians. This is a very bad guy. And more than that, the judge said about him in his statements manafort had, quote, lived an otherwise blameless life and was a good friend and generous person to others. The only person this guy was generous to was the guy who sold the snake skin jacket. He is a bad guy. He robbed from the tobacco this is his past. That is illegal. Defrauding money laundering, defrauding taxes, being in conjunction with other governments -- That's coming up, isn't it? In D.C., he's facing another trial, another sentencing. What was strange to me is that I was never a big fan of the federal sentencing guidelines because it really, you know, tied you up because you would want to recommend something and it took the recommendation and all of your discretion away from you as a federal prosecutor and also took all the discretion away from judges. So I was never a fan of it but now they're just discretionary, but the federal sentencing guidelines were something like -- I think it was up to 25 years. So four years instead of 25 years, there's such a huge discrepancy there, it just didn't really make a lot of sense, especially when you think about someone like ka leaf Browder who spent three years in prison as a 16-year-old for taking a knapsack, two years in solitary confinement, and he was never found guilty of anything and then got out and committed suicide, a 16-year-old black kid. So when I think about the disparity -- A lot of stories like that. -- It really sickened me. I don't know what the judge was thinking but we've got to do something about our system and the racial disparity. He was identifying. I'm a white guy, he's a white guy. We both like trump maybe. It's a prime example of that disparity. Even the politics, take the politics out. This was a wakeup call to everybody. You don't think there's a screwy system, this is the perfect example of that. The list goes on of cases of people who spend their life behind bars, moms of six kids that were charged for nonvolent drug offenses. We had one here. We had one here and we talk about this all the time on the what bothered me about when he came out yesterday, he had zero remorse. He said actually, I'm humiliated, I hope you show me sympathy. I thought, I'm humiliated that you're only going to prison for four years for working and hiding millions of dollars working with Russians. If anything, that's a signal to people who are also doing dirty work of, like, I'll just get a slap on the wrist and go to prison for a few years so what's the problem. Does this have anything to do with Mcconnell trying to stack the courts with conservative judges do you think? Because this is an example of where they'll be judging people. The white house has actually done some good work on criminal justice reform so I don't think you can make the argument -- This white house? Yes. That's what van Jones was speaking about. That's not my issue with this. Paul manafort was always a really bad guy. His lobbying forum was known as the torture lobby because they had a propensity for spinning foreign dictatorships for years and years and years. So he was someone that I think when he became president trump's campaign manager, those of us who come from political circles, he's not anyone someone would touch with a ten-foot pole because of his nefarious past. He actually was forbidden from having anything to do with the 2008 Republican national convention because of concerns over his associations with Russian oligarchs, so he's always been a really bad guy. I always thought he would end up in jail. I thought for longer as well, but I think actually working for trump ended up putting him in jail faster because it brought so much attention to who he is. Which is a good point and I think it's so shameful that this guy got away with defrauding the government of millions for years and years and years, and but for the scrutiny that came from working for trump he would have gotten away with it and he did for decades. Will trump pardon him? You try not paying your taxes. You try defrauding the taxes for -- If trump hadn't run for president he would have gotten away with all this stuff he's going too. Will trump pardon him? That's another discussion. The manafort family, his daughter actually changed her last name from manafort and is quoted as saying that her father had taken blood money, so I do agree, if you're taking blood money from Russian oligarchs and Ukrainians, you should be rotting in jail for the rest of his life and I think we're all in agreement for that. He's going to be facing judge Amy Berman Jackson in D.C. That's for witness tampering. Right. There are two conspiracy counts in front of her. She's going to be a much less sympathetic judge and he's facing ten years in front of her. This guy was supposed to be cooperating with the investigation and he was lying even during the investigation. This sentence is just inexplicable and immoral. I think that the moral of this whole story is you wonder how many others are out there doing the same type of work that don't ever get caught, don't ever get punished. There's also something here that it sets a precedent which is where the paradigm shift has to happen in politics and especially Abby and Ana can attest to this. There were people that would work for trump that wouldn't work for anyone else or that trump would hire that no one else would hire. He enjoys hiring people like It's interesting that -- I always think he gets away with everything and the chickens have come home to roost. When we come back, is Joe

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.