Paul Manafort, the longtime political consultant who once led Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, asked a federal judge for leniency Monday as he faces the potential of spending the rest of his life in prison in criminal cases stemming from the Russia investigation.
In a new court filing, Manafort’s attorneys painted the 69-year-old as a victim of circumstance, prosecuted by special counsel Robert Mueller only because the government could not make the case that he colluded with the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. They also dismissed the prosecutors’ characterization of Manafort as a hardened criminal, saying he was merely a wealthy consultant who committed “garden variety” crimes by illegally lobbying for Ukrainian interests and hiding millions from the IRS.
Monday’s filing comes as the defense attorneys have sought to contain the fallout from the unraveling of Manafort’s plea deal this month.
The US district judge Amy Berman Jackson, who will decide Manafort’s sentence, ruled that Manafort had violated his plea deal by lying to federal agents about several subjects, including about his interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, a business associate who the US says has ties to Russian intelligence.
Manafort hasn’t been accused of any crimes related to Russian election interference, but court papers have revealed that Manafort gave Kilimnik polling data related to the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.
A Mueller prosecutor also said that an August 2016 meeting between the two men went to the “heart” of the Russia investigation. The meeting involved a discussion of a Ukrainian peace plan, but many other details about it have been redacted in court papers.
Defendant Paul Manafort’s sentencing memorandum by The Guardian on Scribd
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