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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (March 8, 2019)
NATION Friday, March 8, 2019 East Oregonian A7 Trump’s former campaign boss Manafort sentenced to 47 months By MATTHEW BARAKAT and STEPHEN BRAUN Associated Press ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced on Thursday to nearly four years in prison for tax and bank fraud related to his work advising Ukrainian politicians, much less than what was called for under sentencing guidelines. Manafort, sitting in a wheelchair as he deals with complications from gout, had no visible reaction as he heard the 47-month sen- tence. While that was the longest sentence to date to come from special coun- sel Robert Mueller’s probe, it could have been much worse for Manafort. Sen- tencing guidelines called for a 20-year-term, effectively a lifetime sentence for the 69-year-old. Manafort has been jailed since June, so he will receive credit for the nine months he has already served. He still faces the possibility of addi- tional time from his sentenc- ing in a separate case in the District of Columbia, where he pleaded guilty to charges related to illegal lobbying. Before Judge T.S. Ellis III imposed the sentence, Manafort told him that “say- ing I feel humiliated and ashamed would be a gross understatement.” But he offered no explicit apology, something Ellis noted before issuing his sentence. Manafort steered Don- ald Trump’s election efforts during crucial months of the 2016 campaign as Rus- sia sought to meddle in the election through hacking of Democratic email accounts. He was among the first Trump associates charged in the Mueller investigation and has been a high-profile defendant. AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File In this Oct. 11, 2018, file photo, adult film actress Stormy Dan- iels arrives at the adult entertainment fair “Venus” in Berlin. Judge dismisses porn star’s hush money suit against Trump Tiny Tiny H H Tiny Tiny Tiny A A But the charges against Manafort were unrelated to his work on the campaign or the focus of Mueller’s inves- tigation: whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russians. A jury last year convicted Manafort on eight counts, concluding that he hid from the IRS millions of dollars he earned from his work in Ukraine. Manafort’s lawyers argued that their client had engaged in what amounted to a routine tax evasion case, and cited numerous past sen- tences in which defendants had hidden millions from the IRS and served less than a year in prison. Prosecutors said Manafort’s conduct was egregious, but Ellis ulti- mately agreed more with defense attorneys. “These guidelines are quite high,” Ellis said. Neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys had requested a particular sen- tence length in their sen- tencing memoranda, but Tiny H Tiny A Tiny H H By BRIAN MELLEY Associated Press AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File In this Nov. 2, 2017, file photo, Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, leaves Federal District Court in Washington. prosecutors had urged a “significant” sentence. Outside court, Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, said his client accepted responsibility for his con- duct “and there was abso- lutely no evidence that Mr. Manafort was involved in any collusion with the gov- ernment of Russia.” Prosecutors left the court- house without making any comment. Though Manafort hasn’t faced charges related to col- lusion, he has been seen as one of the most pivotal fig- ures in the Mueller inves- tigation. Prosecutors, for instance, have scrutinized his relationship with Kon- stantin Kilimnik, a business associate U.S. authorities say is tied to Russian intelli- gence, and have described a furtive meeting the men had in August 2016 as cutting to the heart of the investigation. After pleading guilty in the D.C. case, Manafort met with investigators for more than 50 hours as part of a requirement to cooperate with the probe. But prosecu- tors reiterated at Thursday’s hearing that they believe Manafort was evasive and untruthful in his testimony to a grand jury. Manafort was wheeled into the courtroom about 3:45 p.m. in a green jump- suit from the Alexandria jail, where he spent the last several months in solitary confinement. The jet black hair he bore in 2016 when serving as campaign chair- man was gone, replaced by a shaggy gray. He spent much of the hearing hunched at the shoulders, bearing what appeared to be an air of resignation. Defense lawyers had argued that Manafort would never have been charged if it were not for Mueller’s probe. At the outset of the trial, even Ellis agreed with that assessment, suggesting that Manafort was being prose- cuted only to pressure him to “sing” against Trump. Pros- ecutors said the Manafort investigation preceded Mueller’s appointment. A A H Tiny A 2 Hearing Aids LOS ANGELES — A 2 2 federal Hearing Aids Hearing Aids judge on Thurs- 2 day Hearing Aids tossed out low porn actress for as as for as low as Stormy Daniels’ for as low lawsuit as against President Donald Trump that sought to tear up a hush-money settle- ment about their alleged affair. U.S. District Court Judge S. James Otero in Los Angeles said the suit was irrelevant after Trump and his former personal lawyer agreed not to penal- ize Daniels for violating a nondisclosure agreement she signed in exchange for a $130,000 payment. Attorney Michael Cohen admitted in federal court he arranged the pay- ment to silence Daniels and help Trump win the presi- dency. He pleaded guilty to campaign violations. Trump has denied the alleged 2006 affair. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clif- ford, had wanted a court to declare the agreement ille- gal so she could speak out without fear of financial penalties if she violated it. The shell company Cohen set up to handle the deal, Essential Con- sultants, had once sought to fight Daniels in arbitra- tion for violating the non- disclosure agreement by speaking in public about the alleged affair. Cohen had even threatened a $20 million lawsuit against her before vowing not to. In seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, the president and Cohen effectively gave Daniels what she was ini- tially seeking. They vowed not to seek penalties for breaking the deal. Daniels had fought dis- missal of the case because she wanted to record sworn testimony from the two. 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