Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort will also be sentenced next Wednesday on separate charges that he served as an unregistered foreign agent, laundered money and tampered with a witness. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo Legal Manafort gets 47 months in prison for financial fraud The sentence is the longest to date for a Trump associate ensnared in the special counsel's investigation, but much shorter than expected.

Paul Manafort, the one-time 2016 Trump campaign chairman and longtime Republican lobbyist, was sentenced Thursday to nearly four years in prison for a slate of financial fraud crimes, a much lighter sentence than many had anticipated.

Manafort’s sentence, handed down by U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria, Va., is not the final word on his fate — another sentencing is scheduled next week for a series of additional crimes. However, his 47-month sentence is the longest to date for a Trump associate ensnared in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.


Manafort — wearing a green jail uniform and relying on a wheelchair and cane during the hearing — asked for “compassion” from the judge before receiving his punishment, a coda to 16 months of legal wrangling that has featured his jailing over allegations of witness tampering, gag orders, a ripped up plea deal and the only trial to result from Mueller’s investigation so far.

“The last two years have been the most difficult that my family and I have ever experienced,” he said, seated behind a table and speaking softly. “To say I feel humiliated and ashamed would be a gross understatement. … I can say to you that I feel the punishment from this prosecution already, and know that it was my conduct that brought me here.”

Notably, however, Manafort did not apologize, an omission that Ellis pounced on, chastising Manafort for his criminal behavior, which spanned his years as a prominent consultant both in Washington, D.C., and abroad who earned a reputation for extravagant spending habits and a luxurious lifestyle.

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“I was surprised that I did not hear you express regret for engaging in wrongful conduct,” he said. “I hope you will reflect on that and your regret will be that you didn’t comply with the law.”

And, he noted, “you’ll have that opportunity,” adding, “life is making choices and living with the choices you make.”

But Ellis also signaled that he wasn’t going to send Manafort away for what might have amounted to a life sentence for the 69-year-old, as many had expected. Ellis, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, stressed that he found the sentencing guidelines in the case — which called for between roughly 20 and 24 years — “excessive,” and said he thought Manafort had “lived an otherwise blameless life.” Ellis will count the nine months Manafort has already spent locked up toward his sentence.

Ellis said in court that he considered the guidelines “way out of whack” because other defendants charged with tax evasion or hiding foreign accounts typically get sentences of less than a year and often just probation.

Manafort’s attorneys clearly agreed.

“It’s just so disproportionate,” defense lawyer Thomas Zehnle said. “Tax evasion is by no means jaywalking, but it’s also not narcotics trafficking where people have their lives ruined and people get killed.”

Still, Thursday’s nearly four-year sentence could also grow even longer next Wednesday, when another federal judge will determine whether Manafort should serve additional time for the crimes he pleaded guilty to in a D.C. case: acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Ukraine, money laundering and witness tampering.

With Ellis imposing a sentence well below what many legal experts expected, a critical question now is whether the Washington-based judge, Amy Berman Jackson, will order that her sentence run consecutive to the Virginia one or concurrent with it. Manafort defense attorney Kevin Downing on Thursday asked Ellis to rule that the two sentences run concurrently, but Ellis said he did not think he had that power.

“I don’t believe I can. I think it’s entirely up to her,” Ellis said. He did add that he might revisit that question if Downing can find legal authority to back up his request.

Prosecutors didn’t address that issue Thursday, but said in a court filing last month that they may ask Jackson to make her sentence consecutive in order to ensure that Manafort gets a total sentence closer to the guidelines range.

Mueller’s team has argued that Manafort’s actions demonstrated a ongoing disrespect for the law and that the judge needed to give him a lengthy prison term just to protect society. However, Ellis said he was focused primarily on sending a message to others who might be tempted to dodge their taxes using foreign accounts.

Manafort was convicted last August on eight felony counts, including filing false tax returns, failure to register foreign bank accounts and bank fraud. Jurors deadlocked on 10 other counts, and Mueller eventually agreed to not retry those charges as part of the plea bargain stuck with prosecutors.

“It’s far more important in my view that this case serve as a beacon to warn others not to engage in hiding income overseas to avoid taxes,” the judge said before handing down his sentence.

As part of his punishment handed down Thursday, Manafort was ordered to pay up to about $24 million in restitution, including $6 million in unpaid taxes, as well as a $50,000 fine.

Ellis also emphasized that Manafort’s convictions were not linked to any potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian agents, a subject of intense interest at the heart of Mueller’s probe.

Seemingly bracing for criticism of his sentence as too light, Ellis declared that any prison sentence is a serious one. “If anyone in this courtroom doesn’t think so, go and spend a day in a penitentiary … for a federal felony,” the judge said.

It was unclear how Ellis’ strong views about special counsels may have affected the sentence he delivered Thursday. He alluded to statements he made on that subject earlier in the case, but noted that he found no legal infirmity in Mueller’s prosecution of Manafort.

However, Ellis cautioned that his ruling didn’t mean he was endorsing Mueller‘s having a jurisdiction “not cabined as to time or subject matter.” (Mueller does serve under an appointment order that was shown privately to Ellis, but has not been made public in its entirety.)

There were also other reminders Thursday of Ellis’ distaste for Mueller’s operation.

At one point, the local federal prosecutor assigned to work with Mueller’s team, Uzo Asonye, drew the judge’s ire after declaring that the policy of the “special counsel’s office” is not to recommend specific sentences for defendants in its cases.

“That’s the government’s position,” Ellis snapped. “I don’t want to hear: ‘special counsel.’ I want to hear: ‘the government.’”

Downing argued that Mueller’s office took a harder line in plea negotiations than typical prosecutors. “If we ended up with the same case in a U.S. attorney’s office, we may never have had a trial,” Downing said.

Ellis seemed to agree, at one point interrupting a defense lawyer to say it was obvious why Mueller was throwing the book at Manafort.

“We know why. Come on,” the judge said. “It’s not relevant to my determination of an appropriate sentence, but we all know why he’s here.”

Before announcing the sentence, Ellis explained that Manafort would not receive formal credit under the guidelines for agreeing to cooperate with Mueller as part of a plea deal in the separate D.C. case. However, the judge said he’d take those efforts into account in his ultimate sentence.

A judge ultimately declared that plea deal breached after Mueller’s team accused the former adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush of repeatedly lying to investigators.

Manafort’s attorneys have said that any misstatements were merely a result of their client’s poor memory. They noted on Thursday that Manafort had met with the special counsel’s office for 50 hours as part of his cooperation agreement. Prosecutor Greg Andres rebutted that the sessions yielded no information relevant to the special counsel’s case.

“It certainly wasn’t 50 hours of information we thought was useful,” Andres said, noting that the information Manafort provided was already in investigators’ hands.

Outside the federal courthouse, Downing said his client’s statement in court “means he accepts responsibility for his conduct.”

“And most importantly,” he added, “what you saw today is the same thing that we had said from Day 1: There is absolutely no evidence that Paul Manafort was involved in any collusion with any government official from Russia.”

The comment from Downing appeared to be a retreat from broader denials Manafort’s team has issued in the past.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys have acknowledged in recent court filings that while Manafort was running the Trump campaign he shared internal polling data with a Russian-Ukrainian national who served as an aide to Manafort for years, Konstantin Kilimnik, as well as with wealthy Ukrainian businessmen with pro-Russian views.

In the run-up to Thursday’s sentencing, Mueller’s office had portrayed Manafort as a hardened criminal who brazenly broke the law multiple times over several decades, including after his indictment when he tampered with witnesses and after his plea deal when he lied to federal prosecutors and a grand jury.

In their rebuttals, Manafort's defense attorneys repeatedly pointed to Ellis’s public comments that none of Manafort’s crimes appeared related to Russian interference in the 2016 election. Prosecutors countered that some of the bank fraud charges involved claims he traded on his influence in Trump circles to fraudulently obtain bank loans.

Still, the bulk of the charges stem from Manafort’s work as a political consultant in Ukraine prior to Trump’s presidential run. They center around accusations that the operative stashed away tens of millions of dollars in offshore bank accounts while cheating the IRS and defrauding three banks to get loans worth more than $25 million.

“His deceit, which is a fundamental component of the crimes of conviction and relevant conduct, extended to tax preparers, bookkeepers, banks, the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice National Security Division, the FBI, the Special Counsel’s Office, the grand jury, his own legal counsel, Members of Congress, and members of the executive branch of the United States government,” prosecutors argued last month in one of their sentencing memos.

“In sum, upon release from jail,” the Mueller team added, “Manafort presents a grave risk of recidivism.”

Manafort’s lawyers had pleaded for leniency by noting Mueller’s case has broken their client “personally, professional and financially. Manafort has been jailed since last June after being accused of pressuring witnesses.

Trump could still step in and save his former aide. On Twitter, the president said he felt “very badly” for Manafort after his verdict came down last August. Trump later confirmed his willingness to consider a pardon.

However, a Trump pardon could have limited impact. Manafort’s admissions to tax and bank fraud offenses could ease his prosecution in state courts for similar crimes, although some states like New York have protections against state retrials for identical offenses.

In addition, Manafort has already forfeited tens of millions of dollars in property that legal experts say Trump likely can’t return to his ex-campaign chair.

Manafort faced a maximum possible sentence of 80 years in prison for the crimes he was convicted of in Virginia last August. Mueller’s team endorsed sentencing guidelines that called for Manafort to receive between about 20 and 24 years in prison. But while prosecutors called for a serious sentence, they did not explicitly urge Ellis to give Manafort a sentence in that range.

Defense attorneys said the guidelines were “clearly disproportionate” to Manafort’s conduct. They, too, didn’t make any explicit recommendations but urged Ellis to impose a sentence “substantially below” the guidelines.

Manafort’s first sentence in the Virginia case is the largest to date for anyone snagged in the Mueller probe, though not by much. Previously, the most severe penalty was a three-year sentence given to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to a series of charges involving false statements, tax fraud and campaign finance violations — some that federal prosecutors brought in New York. He will report to prison in May.

Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and Rick Gates , a one-time Trump campaign deputy and Manafort business associate, are still cooperating with federal prosecutors and do not have sentencing dates scheduled.

In the Washington case, Manafort faces a maximum possible sentence of 10 years in prison. Prosecutors haven’t recommended a specific sentence there, but have said they might urge the judge to tack on whatever prison time she imposes to the end of Ellis’s sentence rather than letting Manafort serve both sentences concurrently.