JUST IN: Paul Manafort sentenced to 47 months in prison

It’s all the rage right now in the media that Paul Manafort has been sentenced to 47 months in prison for bank and tax fraud.

Here’s what we know:

BLOOMBERG – Paul Manafort, who helped define Washington’s modern lobbying culture and advised four U.S. presidents, was sentenced to less than four years in prison for hiding millions of dollars offshore to support a glittering lifestyle that included six homes, dozens of custom suits and a $15,000 ostrich jacket.

Manafort, 69, faced the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison, but got a break from the federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, Thursday who called a recommendation for a sentence of 19 years to 24 1/2 years excessive.

Manafort’s punishment of three years and 11 months behind bars could still get worse. He faces another decade in prison when he’s sentenced March 13 in Washington for conspiracy counts related to a secret lobbying campaign on behalf of Ukraine and for joining a Russian associate in tampering with witnesses.

Manafort, who attended the hearing in a wheelchair, wearing a green jumpsuit, had asked the judge for mercy in a brief statement. He was convicted of eight felonies, including hiding $55 million abroad, cheating the U.S. of more than $6 million in taxes and defrauding banks that lent him money. His lawyers didn’t dispute that his crimes were serious, conceding he didn’t report income made offshore to the Internal Revenue Service, hid accounts from the Treasury Department and lied to lenders after his cash dwindled.

But they insisted that Manafort, who worked on Trump’s campaign without pay, never colluded with Russia. They said Mueller singled him out because he worked for Trump. And they said Manafort’s work for former President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine wasn’t on behalf of a Kremlin-aligned politician, as Mueller contends, but rather an effort to steer Ukraine toward the U.S.-friendly European Union.

It says something that the judge refused to imprison Manafort for the two decades that the prosecution requested, calling it excessive.

It also says something that none of this had anything to do with Russian collusion in the 2016 election.

But regardless of all this, something tells me that after Manafort is in prison for a while, Trump will likely grant him clemency. It probably won’t happen until after he wins or loses in 2020, but I fully expect it to happen.

As I’m writing this, I see on MSNBC that Manafort will get 9 months of his sentence already served. So I guess that means it’s really 38 months?


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