President Donald Trump’s former marketing campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been sentenced by a federal judge to 73 months behind bars for 2 conspiracy fees. Last week, he was sentenced for one more time period over tax and financial institution fraud.
Manafort appeared in a Washington, DC courtroom in a wheelchair on Wednesday, asking the judge for leniency. The “case has taken everything from me already” the 69-year-old lawyer mentioned.
“I am sorry for what I have done and all the activities that have gotten us here today,” Manafort instructed the courtroom. “While I cannot undo the past, I will ensure that the future will be very different.”Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his marketing campaign supervisor Paul Manafort on the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, U.S., July 21, 2016 © REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo
Last week, in a federal courtroom in Virginia, Manafort was sentenced to almost 4 years in prison (47 months) in a separate case, involving financial institution and tax fraud. Some 30 months from the brand new time period, nevertheless, will run concurrently with the earlier conviction, with Manafort spending seven and a half years behind bars in whole.
The veteran lobbyist who ran Trump’s presidential marketing campaign between March and August 2016 was focused by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors in the course of their “Russiagate” probe. Instead of turning up any proof of “collusion” with the Kremlin, nevertheless, the prosecutors charged him with monetary crimes related to his lobbying work in Ukraine, totally unrelated to the 2016 election.
Mueller was appointed by the deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May 2017, after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. He was tasked to examine allegations that Trump and his marketing campaign “colluded” with Russia again in 2016, receiving near-unlimited authority.