Manafort ‘brazenly’ broke law for years

Bloomberg

Special Counsel Robert Mueller told the judge who’ll sentence President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman that Paul Manafort “brazenly violated the law” for a decade and presents a “grave risk” of committing new crimes.
Manafort, 69, is set to be sentenced on March 13 in Washington, where he pleaded guilty to two conspiracy counts and faces as much as a decade in prison. That sentencing will come days after he’s sentenced in Alexandria, Virginia, where jurors convicted him of tax- and bank fraud. Prosecutors say Manafort faces as much as 24 years in prison in that case.
“For over a decade, Manafort repeatedly and brazenly violated the law,” Mueller’s prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo unsealed in federal court in Washington. Mueller is investigating whether anyone in Trump’s campaign conspired with Russians who interfered in the 2016 US elections. “The sentence in this case must take into account the gravity of this conduct.”
Manafort engaged in witness tampering while on bail, then went on to lie repeatedly after he pleaded guilty and pledged to help with Mueller’s investigation, according to the filing. After his guilty plea, Manafort “committed the additional crimes of perjury and making false statements.” Mueller hasn’t charged Manafort with those crimes, but US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson can consider that conduct at sentencing.
As part of his guilty plea, Manafort admitted to conspiring against the US by laundering money, cheating the US out of taxes, failing to file foreign bank account reports, violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and lying to the Justice Department. In the other count, he also admitted that he conspired to obstruct justice by tampering with witnesses.
Manafort worked for pro-Ukrainian politicians and political parties for years, and secretly oversaw an $11 million lobbying campaign, he admitted. He also confessed that he conspired with Konstantin Kilimnik, a translator whom prosecutors say has ties to Russian intelligence, to tamper with witnesses.
Kilimnik worked for a decade with Manafort in Ukraine. They met several times during and after the campaign, raising Mueller’s suspicions. Prosecutors have focused on how Manafort shared polling data about Trump’s campaign with Kilimnik, as well as on their discussion of a peace plan for Ukraine.