Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort received a light sentence of under four years because the judge was biased against special counsel Robert Mueller, according to a lawyer who defended a former congressman who was put away for 13 years for similar crimes.
Michael Fawer was an attorney for William Jefferson, the former Louisiana congressman in the infamous “cold cash” case. Jefferson, nicknamed “Dollar Bill,” was found by the FBI with $90,000 stashed in his freezer and was found guilty of leveraging his public office to solicit hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in West Africa.
In 2009, Jefferson, now 71, received a sentence of 13 years from Judge T.S. Ellis, who gave Manafort just 47 months. With nine months already served, Manafort could be out in less than three years if he is treated with similar leniency by Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is presiding over a separate case in Washington, D.C.
The light sentence for Manafort, 69 — federal guidelines indicated he would get between 19 and 24 years — prompted a wave of commentary that he had been treated with particular indulgence because he was a wealthy, white male living in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. Jefferson is black and represented impoverished New Orleans.
“How do you square Jefferson’s 13-year sentence with Manafort’s four years?” asked Fawer. “You can’t.” Fawer, who represented Jefferson for most of his case, told the Washington Examiner: “I found the Manafort sentence inordinately light, to say the least. My view of Judge Ellis in the Manafort case is that he had antipathy toward the special counsel, and he took that out in the case.”
During Manafort’s trial last year, Ellis harshly questioned the motivation of the government’s attorneys, representing Mueller, in his investigation which initially focused on whether there was collusion between Russia and the Trump but subsequently broadened into a range of other areas.
“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud … 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,” Ellis said at one point.
Fawer, who represented Jefferson for years before handing the case over when it reached trial before Ellis, said: “Ellis should’ve recused himself because of the comments he made during the trial. I think he went into the case with a predilection, and that showed up in the sentencing. He was either not a fan of this special counsel or of special counsels in general.”
Jefferson represented Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District from 1991 until he lost reelection in 2008 under a cloud of corruption. The FBI raided his home in 2005 and, controversially, his congressional office in 2006. Their investigations uncovered schemes involving extensive bribery efforts in West Africa, where the congressman was using his position to influence policies that would be favorable to businesses he was extracting bribes from.
In 2009, a jury convicted him on 11 charges, including conspiracy, bribery, wire fraud, and a RICO violation. The government’s sentencing guidelines called for “approximately 27 to 33 years of imprisonment” — but Ellis sentenced him to 13. This was still the biggest sentence that any congressman had ever received for reason for crimes committed while in office. Almost all of it would be reversed when a Supreme Court ruling pressured Ellis to vacate many of the convictions after Jefferson had been in prison for five years.
Manafort was convicted in Virginia on five tax fraud charges, two bank fraud charges, and one charge of hiding foreign bank accounts. The special counsel’s office claimed that Manafort’s financial crimes included more than $16 million in unreported income, $6 million in unpaid federal taxes, and $55 million hidden in foreign bank accounts.
During the sentencing for Jefferson in 2009, Ellis said that “public corruption is a cancer that needs to be surgically removed.” He also said he hoped the Jefferson ruling would serve as a “beacon” to prevent further public corruption — mirroring language he used in his Manafort ruling, saying: “I hope this ruling is a beacon to warn others not to hide income overseas to avoid paying taxes.”
In 2016, the Supreme Court overturned former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s conviction on public corruption charges, limiting the scope of what “official acts” by public officials meant. The Supreme Court’s ruling encompassed many of Jefferson’s convictions, forcing Ellis to reconsider the case. Taking the higher court ruling into account, Ellis ruled in 2017 that some of what he’d been convicted on no longer rose to the definition of “official acts.”
Ellis vacated most of Jefferson’s convictions in October 2017 and, following a new sentencing hearing in December 2017, the remaining charges. Jefferson would walk free after a five-year stint behind bars.
Fawer pointed out: “Ellis eventually reduced Jefferson’s jail time and let him out of prison, which was nice. But when he reduced Jefferson’s sentence, he had no alternative. He was forced to reduce it unless he was going to go against the Supreme Court. What is more telling is the 13 years he originally gave Jefferson. Thirteen years for something the Supreme Court would rule was not even a crime.”
Seeking to head off critics of his Manafort sentencing, Ellis said: “I think what I’ve done is sufficiently punitive — and anyone who disagrees should try spend a day in a federal penitentiary. And Mr. Manafort is spending 47 months there.”
Fawer said Manafort wasn’t out of the woods, and the sentencing in D.C. next week by Jackson spelled trouble for him. “Ultimately, it’s Judge Jackson who is going to decide this. D.C. is where the story is really going to be told. And I don’t think four years in prison is all Manafort is going to get.”
He was scathing about Ellis: “His original sentence for Jefferson was 13 years. What is it that Jefferson did that was somehow so much worse than what Manafort did?” And Ellis said that Manafort had led an ‘otherwise blameless life’ prior to all this? A blameless life as a long-time criminal? Come on. And I say this as a defense attorney.”
