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Paul Manafort was sentenced Thursday to just under four years in prison for a massive fraud scheme tied to his work as a political consultant for Ukraine’s pro-Russian government, according to reports from the Virginia courthouse. The 47-month sentence imposed by federal Judge T.S. Ellis III was far below sentencing guidelines of 19-1/2 to 24 years, which Ellis called “excessive.”

President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort will be sentenced by a U.S. judge in Virginia on Thursday for bank and tax fraud. The fraud was uncovered during Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 election. Manafort could face what effectively would be a life sentence in prison for the eight charges the veteran Republican political consultant was convicted of by a jury in Alexandria last August.

Special counsel Robert Mueller says in a new filing that he’s not taking a position on how much time Paul Manafort should spend in prison for charges in Washington, D.C., but told the judge presiding over his case that he doesn’t deserve leniency. “Nothing about Manafort’s upbringing, schooling, legal education, or family and financial circumstances mitigates his criminality,” Mueller said in a heavily redacted sentencing memo released Saturday, which details Manafort’s crimes. In the document, originally filed under seal on Friday night, Mueller said that the onetime Trump campaign chairman agreed in his plea deal that anything less than the...

State prosecutors in New York are preparing a criminal case against Paul Manafort, the former chairman of President Donald Trump's campaign, in the event that Trump pardons him for federal crimes, Bloomberg News reported. According to the report, Cyrus Vance Jr., the New York district attorney, is gearing up to file tax and accounting charges against Manafort if Trump exercises his pardon power. The Constitution grants the president authority to pardon federal crimes but not state crimes. Manhattan prosecutors have been investigating Manafort since 2017, months before the special counsel Robert Mueller charged the former Trump campaign chairman with failure...

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Prosecutors working in special counsel Robert Mueller's office are recommending a federal judge in Virginia sentence President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort to at least 19 years in prison. Manafort was convicted on eight counts of bank and tax fraud in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia last summer. Prosecutors have recommended that Manafort, 69, serve a sentence of 19.5 to 24.5 years in prison for the crimes. Mueller's office is also recommending a fine range of $50,000 to $24.4 million, a term of supervised release of up to five years, restitution in the amount...

Decision at link. A federal court judge on Wednesday threw out Paul Manafort's plea agreement. According to the judge, when Manafort entered the agreement, he said he would "cooperate fully, truthfully, completely and forthrightly with the government," but he broke that agreement when he lied to special counselor Robert Mueller. Judge Amy Berman Jackson said that Manafort "intentionally made multiple false statements to the FBI, the OSC [office of the special counsel] and the grand jury concerning matters that were material to the investigation." Here's the full court decision:

Federal prosecutors in recent weeks have been interviewing witnesses about the flow of foreign money to three powerful law and lobbying firms that Paul Manafort recruited seven years ago to help improve the image of the Russia-aligned president of Ukraine, people familiar with the questioning said. The previously unreported interviews about the flow of the money are among the latest developments in the investigation of key figures who worked at the three firms — Mercury Public Affairs, the Podesta Group and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Prosecutors have focused on the role of Skadden Arps’s lead partner on the...

A federal judge in Virginia Monday abruptly canceled the sentencing hearing for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, originally scheduled for next month. The hearing in which Mr. Manafort would have learned his fate for a host of financial fraud crimes was initially set for Feb 8. But U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis said it was “prudent” to delay the hearing because of a separate, but related dispute in Washington, D.C. “Because it appears that resolution of the current dispute in defendant’s prosecution in the District of Columbia may have some effect on the sentencing decision in this case,...

The Justice Department is alleging that the former Obama White House general counsel made ‘false and misleading’ statements regarding consulting work done for Ukraine. Greg Craig was lead partner for the law firm Skadden Arps on its Ukraine work, which was done in partnership with Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman. Skadden Arps agreed Thursday to settle with the Justice Department by registering as a foreign agent of Ukraine and paying a $4.6 million fine. Craig’s fate remains uncertain. The former general counsel for President Obama made “false and misleading statements” to the Justice Department regarding work he...

Germany’s largest lender is set to shut over a quarter of its branches across the country as the company goes through a major restructuring process. The closures are set to take place over the next few months, with 188 of Deutsche Bank’s 723 branches nationwide due to close their doors. […] After recording colossal losses of around €7 billion in 2015, the Frankfurt lender is desperately seeking ways to cut costs. […] The bank said it hopes to redirect funds to digital banking, in which it hopes to invest €750 million by 2020. …

I'll give the New York Times some credit. It may be a mostly worthless Democrat messaging machine that promotes racism and anti-Semitism, but at least, unlike the Washington Post, it still maintains some of its traditional habit of correcting errors after they appear. A properly woke paper would embrace the errors, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez style, as being morally right, even if factually wrong.

Jailed former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is suffering from depression, anxiety and “severe gout” while behind bars, his lawyers say in new court filings. Manafort is being kept in solitary confinement “to ensure his safety” but the conditions “have taken a toll on his physical and mental health,” his attorneys wrote in a document made public Tuesday. “As just one example, for several months Mr. Manafort has suffered from severe gout, at times confining him to a wheelchair,” they write. “He also suffers from depression and anxiety and, due to the facility’s visitation regulations, has had very little contact...

A major court filing error led to secret details of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s criminal case leaking out into the public sphere on Tuesday. Defense attorneys filed a response contesting special counsel Robert Mueller’s allegations that Manafort lied to federal investigators on a variety of subjects in breach of his plea agreement. But while portions of the filing were supposed to be redacted and shielded from the public, court watchers were able to view the filing in its entirety by copying and pasting the redacted sections. The error resulted in Manafort's attorneys disclosing that Mueller has accused Manafort...

Attorneys for Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chairman, submitted a poorly redacted filing on Tuesday revealing that Manafort shared polling data with a Russian operative during the campaign. Special counsel Robert Mueller submitted a filing in November accusing Manafort of breaching his plea agreement with the special counsel's office by lying to federal investigators. The special counsel said in a memo describing Manafort's alleged wrongdoing in December that Manafort's lies to federal investigators were not simply "memory lapses." According to that memo, Manafort lied about several things in breach of his plea deal, including his contact with Konstantin Kilimnik, who...

Attorneys for President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort appear to have missed a court-ordered deadline to reply to special counsel Robert Mueller’s accusations that Manafort breached a plea agreement by lying to federal prosecutors. A filing responding to the claims was due Monday, but the midnight deadline came and went without any submission appearing on the court’s docket. This could mean Manafort’s attorneys either missed the deadline or filed the entire document under seal, though attorneys normally would announce their intention to do so and the docket would reflect that. Manafort’s attorneys did not respond to a request for...

Jamal Khashoggi’s op-eds published in the very influential Washington Post certainly qualify as attempts to change U.S. policy against Saudi Arabia and in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Washington Post has caused itself a major scandal since it has come to light they and their martyred “reformer” Jamal Khashoggi were publishing anti-Saudi propaganda for Qatar. They tried to bury this in a pre-Christmas Saturday news dump, but that can’t stop the damage this will do to their reputation.“Text messages between Khashoggi and an executive at Qatar Foundation International show that the executive, Maggie Mitchell Salem, at times shaped the...

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