WASHINGTON (AP) Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced to a total of seven and a half years in prison on federal charges, then was hit almost immediately with fresh state charges in New York that could put him outside the presidents power to pardon.
In Washington on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson brushed aside Manaforts pleas for leniency and rebuked him for misleading the U.S. government about his lucrative foreign lobbying work and for encouraging witnesses to lie on his behalf.
It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the extraordinary amount of money involved in the crimes, Jackson told Manafort, 69, who sat stone-faced in a wheelchair he has used because of gout. She added three-and-a-half years on top of the nearly four-year sentence Manafort received last week in a separate case in Virginia, though hell get credit for nine months already served.
The sentencing hearing was a milestone in special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election campaign. Manafort was among the first people charged in the investigation, and though the allegations did not relate to his work for candidate Donald Trump, his foreign entanglements and business relationship with an associate the U.S. says has ties to Russian intelligence have made him a pivotal figure in the probe.
Prosecutors are updating judges this week on the cooperation provided by other key defendants in the case . Mueller is expected to soon conclude his investigation in a confidential report to the Justice Department.
