US judge sentences former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to 3½ more years in prison
- Sentence comes six days after a different judge gave Manafort lenient term of 47 months for separate case in Virginia
- Manafort also hit with 16 new charges in New York
US President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced on Wednesday to roughly 3½ more years in prison for charges arising from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s role in the 2016 US election, with the judge giving him a stern lecture about his lies and criminal behaviour.
The 73-month sentence imposed by US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington came six days after a different judge gave Manafort a lenient term of 47 months – just under four years – in prison in a separate case in Virginia, with credit for nine months he already has spent behind bars.
Jackson said 30 months of her sentence will run at the same time as the sentence in the Virginia case. That means the combined sentence will be six years and nine months.
Less than an hour after the sentencing, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance announced that the new charges were filed in the state Supreme Court last Thursday indicting Manafort on 16 new charges in New York including residential mortgage fraud.
In the year-long fraud scheme, Manafort and others falsified business records to illegally obtain millions of dollars, Vance said in a statement.
While Trump has not ruled out a presidential pardon for Manafort, and after last week’s sentencing said “I feel very badly” for his former aide, the newest charges, which originate from unpaid state taxes, cannot be erased by a presidential pardon, which are applicable only to federal crimes.
