UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v.PAUL J. MANAFORT, JR., Defendant. SUPERSEDING CRIMINAL INFORMATION

1. PAUL J. MANAFORT, JR. (MANAFORT) served for years as a political consultant and lobbyist. Between at least 2006 and 2015, MANAFORT conspired with Richard W. Gates (Gates),Konstantin Kilimnik (Kilimnik), and others to act, and acted, as unregistered agents of a foreign government and political party.

Specifically, MANAFORT conspired to act and acted as an agent of the Government of Ukraine, the Party of Regions (a Ukrainian political party whose leader Victor Yanukovych was President from 2010 to 2014), President Yanukovych, and the Opposition Bloc (a successor to the Party of Regions that formed in 2014 when Yanukovych fled to Russia).

MANAFORT generated more than 60 million dollars in income as a result of his Ukraine work.

In order to hide Ukraine payments from United States authorities, from approximately 2006 through at least 2016, MANAFORT, with the assistance of Gates and Kilimnik, laundered the money through scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships, and bank accounts.

Ok. I looked at it. Read the part right on the first page where it says "each count of Conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. 371 carries a maximum term of five years imprisonment". That is all that matters. You can have a Guidelines range through the roof (which many of my clients do) and it not really matter.

Happens all the time in drug conspiracy cases where you get these monetary amounts and drug quantities that jack the Guidelines range sky high--but you negotiate a deal to plea a "conspiracy to distribute mis-branded products" under §371 and are capped at five years.

The Guidelines are only advisory, not mandatory. I have to explain to my clients prior to sentencing all of the time not to freak out when the judge says your Guidelines are 188-235 months because he can't give you more than 60 months whether he wants to or not. That's what is happening here.

Based on my reading of the agreement, Manafort can't get more than 60 months on each count, and he'll get credit for any time already served. Hopefully this helps explain it. I wasn't trying to be rude--I would never expect a non-defense attorney to understand a federal plea agreement. That language can be really confusing to someone just reading it at its word. Just remember--the statute controls, and if it was just a plea to §371, then 5 years is the most he can get.

Now, in theory, since it was two counts, the judge could give him consecutive five year sentences for a total of 10, so his absolute maximum exposure is 10 years on both. However, that is rare, and he'll likely get concurrent terms on both, and probably not a lot of time anyway. Just my guess.

In closing, I totally agree that this whole thing is a political witch hunt and Mueller is a complete farce.

Absolutely NO problem! Happy to clarify and apologize if I came off wrong. In the end, my guess is he’ll get 24-30 months tops, if even that. They REALLY don’t care about Manafort. This was all a show trial. If he wasn’t involved with Trump, they never would have even charged this stuff. However, they need to get a conviction to save face and Manafort likely did break a bunch of technical laws that could, in theory, get him a ton of time if he lost a jury trial, so they negotiated this deal. Of course the press will run with it and blame Trump for everything, but what else is new?

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