Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Wednesday sentenced Paul Manafort to 43 more months in prison on two conspiracy charges.
The sentence follows the nearly four-year sentence he received last week from a Virginia judge for concealing millions of dollars of overseas income. The conspiracy charges were heard in Washington, D.C., and deal with charges of committing crimes against the U.S. and obstructing justice, to which he pleaded guilty last year.
The new sentence means Manafort still needs to serve nearly 7 years in prison. Here’s how his sentencing breaks down:
- Jackson sentenced Manafort to 60 months total for the first count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S., but gave him credit for half of that time as time served, leaving an effective new sentence of 30 months.
- Jackson sentenced Manafort to 13 months for the second count of obstruction of justice. That means 43 new months of prison time for Manafort, which will be added to last week’s sentence.
- Last week, Manafort was sentenced to 47 months, but was given credit for 9 months of time he served since he was held in prison during his trial, leaving him 38 months left.
- The two sentences leave Manafort with 81 more months to serve in prison, or almost 7 years, as Jackson said her new sentence this week would have to be served consecutively.
- In terms of total time sentenced, Manafort received 47 months last week, and a total of 73 months this week, for a total of 120 months or 10 years.
The tax fraud charges and the conspiracy charges all stem from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into President Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign.
[Read more: Paul Manafort apologizes at second sentencing]
Many anticipated that Jackson, an Obama appointee, would hand down a harsher sentence than the one he got in Virginia. During the trial, Jackson revoked Manafort’s bail in the wake of accusations of witness tampering and placed him in prison for the duration of the proceedings.
Mueller’s office later alleged that Manafort broke his plea agreement, and Jackson agreed, which opened him up to years in prison.
And in 2017, Manafort’s lawyers said publicly there was no evidence that Manafort or anyone else colluded with Russia, which prompted a rebuke from Jackson. “I expect counsel to do their talking in this courtroom and in their pleadings and not on the courthouse steps,” she said.
Across the river in Virginia, Judge T.S. Ellis III, a Reagan appointee, seemed more open to the implication from Manafort’s lawyers that their client was a victim of an effort to prove Trump colluded with Russia.
“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” Ellis told prosecutors. “What you really care about is what information Mr. Manafort could give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment.”
Manafort joined the Trump campaign in March 2016, during Trump’s primary battle against Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and others to secure delegates for the upcoming Republican convention. He also helped quickly defeat efforts on the floor of the convention to open it up to a possible challenge to Trump.
Manafort left the Trump campaign in August 2016, before Trump’s win. He was arrested and indicted in Mueller’s investigation the following fall.
It was during his time on the Trump campaign that Manafort’s foreign lobbying work, especially work associated with Russia-linked clients in Ukraine, came under renewed scrutiny. He retroactively registered himself under the Foreign Agents Registration Act in 2017.
During the campaign, Manafort is alleged to have shared polling data with and discussed a Ukrainian peace plan with Konstantin Kilimnik, a political consultant in Ukraine with alleged ties to Russian intelligence. But Manafort’s guilty verdicts and guilty plea do not relate directly to alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
