![]() President Donald Trump says he feels "very badly" for his former campaign chairman after Paul Manafort was sentenced to an additional 3½ years in prison. The sentencing hearing was a milestone in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election campaign. Jackson added three-and-a-half years on top of the nearly four-year sentence Manafort received last week in a separate case in Virginia, though he'll get credit for nine months already served. government about his lucrative foreign lobbying work and for encouraging witnesses to lie on his behalf. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson brushed aside Manafort's pleas for leniency and rebuked him for misleading the U.S. Manafort's lawyers have argued that the evidence suggesting he tampered with witnesses is thin.WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the sentencing of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort (all times local):įormer Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been sentenced to a total of seven and a half years in prison, then hit almost immediately with fresh state charges in New York that could put him outside the president's power to pardon. The indictment accused them of attempting to call, text and send encrypted messages starting in February to two people from a political discussion group - the so-called Hapsburg Group - that worked with Manafort to promote Ukraine's interests in a bid to sway their testimony. "Either he can double down in his resolve to fight it or it's the last straw and it breaks his will and he decides to work out a plea bargain," Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor, told Reuters.Ī June 8 indictment accused Manafort and an aide with tampering with witnesses about their past lobbying for Ukraine's former pro-Russian government. Legal experts say Mueller wants to keep applying pressure on Manafort to plead guilty and assist prosecutors with the probe. Manafort resigned in August 2016 following a news report he had received possibly illegal payments from Yanukovych's political party. The charges against him in Washington include failing to register as a foreign agent for the pro-Russia Ukrainian government under former President Viktor Yanukovych. Manafort has ties to a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine and a Russian oligarch close to the Kremlin. ![]() "When the whole thing is over, things might get cleaned up with some presidential pardons," Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani told the New York Daily News on Friday. Trump has the power to pardon his former aide of any federal crimes preemptively, as then-President Gerald Ford did for his predecessor Richard Nixon in 1974. Manafort chaired the Republican's presidential campaign during the period when Trump, a former reality TV star, won his party's nomination. ![]() None of Manafort's charges refer to the allegations of Russian meddling and largely pre-date the two months he worked as Trump campaign head. Manafort is due to go on trial in Washington in September and faces another trial on related charges in Virginia in July. Moscow denies US intelligence agency allegations that it interfered in the election and Trump denies collusion. Mueller, whose investigation has overshadowed Trump's presidency, is looking into whether any Trump campaign associates coordinated with Russia and if Trump unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe.
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