A federal judge dealt a sharp blow to special counsel Robert Mueller’s credibility during the sentencing hearing for Paul Manafort.
The special counsel investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government has cost taxpayers more than $25 million, yet it hasn’t produced a shred of evidence indicating that any such collusion took place.
Mueller’s team has ensnared numerous individuals for unrelated crimes, and Manafort, who briefly served as chairman of the Trump campaign in 2016, is by far the highest-profile victim of Mueller’s witch hunt.
Judge T.S. Ellis, the senior judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, made the special counsel’s team look like desperate political hacks on a wild goose chase while sentencing Manafort on eight counts of bank and tax fraud related to his overseas lobbying work.
In a ruling that stunned the political world, Ellis rejected Mueller’s “excessive” request for a prison term of 19 to 24 years and gave Manafort only 47 months behind bars, with credit for the nine months he’s already served.
Ellis, the former Navy F-4 fighter pilot issued a damning appraisal of the harsh sentence sought by the special counsel’s office, practically daring prosecutors to grouse about his decision.
“To impose a sentence of 19-24 years on Mr. Manafort would clearly be a disparity. In the end, I don’t think the guidelines range is at all appropriate,” Ellis said. “I think what I’ve done is sufficiently punitive, and anyone who disagrees should spend a day in a federal penitentiary.”
The rebuke reflected Ellis’ oft-stated unease with Mueller’s strategy of prosecuting unrelated crimes as a means of pressuring potential witnesses to share information about collusion, an approach that can create a perverse incentive for those targeted by the special counsel’s probe to make false statements in hopes that they will be rewarded with lighter sentences.
Ellis has long been aware of these corrupt tactics, and he made his misgivings known to Mueller’s team almost a year ago.
“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” Ellis told the special prosecutor’s team during a 2018 pretrial hearing. “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. … This vernacular is to ‘sing,’ is what prosecutors use. What you got to be careful of is, they may not only sing, they may compose.”
Ellis also chastised Mueller during the trial for spending an inordinate amount of time cataloging Manafort’s lavish lifestyle and expensive clothing, saying, “The government doesn’t want to prosecute somebody because they wear nice clothes, do they? Let’s move on.”
Let’s move on, indeed. Mueller’s investigation has produced zero evidence of collusion, but it has secured convictions for numerous process crimes directly related to the investigation itself — an example, some say, of incrimination through government intimidation. Like Ellis did in Manafort’s case, judges have generally given the defendants relatively lenient treatment, such as the 14-day sentence handed down to entrapped former Trump campaign volunteer George Papadopoulos.
Ellis is clearly fed up, as every reasonable person should be, with Mueller’s approach to the investigation. The judge’s stinging reproach of the special counsel at Manafort’s sentencing should be a reminder that this whole sordid affair was misguided from the start.
Jenna Ellis (@realJennaEllis) is a member of the Trump 2020 Advisory Board. She is a constitutional law attorney, radio host, and the author of The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution.
