Mueller: Guidelines Call For Manafort To Get Up To 24.5 Years In Prison For Virginia Convictions

(Politico) DARREN SAMUELSOHN and JOSH GERSTEIN 02/15/2019 07:42 PM Robert Muellers team told a federal judge Friday that federal guidelines call for Paul Manafort to get as long as 24-and-a-half years in prison for his conviction last summer for financial malfeasance. The special counsels submission is the opening move in what will be a two-step sentencing process for the 69-year-old former Trump campaign chairman who appears to be on track to spend the rest of his life in prison absent a presidential pardon. A jury in Northern Virginia convicted Manafort after a three-week trial in August on eight felony counts including filing false tax documents failing to register foreign bank accounts and bank fraud. A month later on the eve of another trial in Washington D.C. Manafort pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in exchange for the special counsel dropping foreign-lobbying and money-laundering charges. In their 27-page memo filed late Friday Muellers team said it concurred with a probation office calculation that federal sentencing guidelines call for Manafort to serve between 19-and-a-half and 24-and-a-half years in prison for the Virginia case alone. The non-binding guidelines also urge a fine between $50000 and $24.4 million supervised release of up to five years and forfeitures in the amount of more than $4.4 million for the former Trump campaign chief prosecutors said.