Special counsel Robert Mueller has filed a damning 800-page sentencing memo in one of two criminal cases against Paul Manafort.
The report reveals Manafort’s ‘criminal actions were bold’ and the former Trump campaign chairman ‘repeatedly and brazenly’ broke the law for over a decade.
Some of his crimes were committed while he was working as Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and they continued even after he was on bail from the Mueller’s court.
The lengthy memo suggests Manafort be jailed for 17 to nearly 22 years when he’s sentenced in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. on March 13.
He pleaded guilty in September in the D.C. case to conspiracy against the U.S. and conspiracy witness tampering stemming from his Ukrainian political consulting work.
Manafort’s sentencing memorandum was due to be publicly available by midnight Friday, but failed to come to light, suggesting that the document might have been under a seal.
Finally, on Saturday the document was published after a judge had a chance to review and approve proposed redactions of sensitive information.
The document outlines all the facts prosecutors should consider in weighing a jail sentence for the 69-year-old, who’s been sitting in jail since June.
In the document, prosecutors cast light on the great range of people Manafort deceived including ‘Members of Congress, and members of the executive branch of the United States government.’
The sentencing recommendation comes as Manafort, who led Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for several critical months, is already facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison in a separate case.
It also sheds light on how Manafort fits into Mueller’s larger Russian investigation, which is nearing an end.
It’s the last requisite court filing in Mueller’s exhaustive investigation that dug into Manafort’s hidden Cypriot bank accounts, Ukrainian political efforts in Europe and the U.S. as well as his time working with the Trump campaign.
Manafort will be able to file his own sentencing recommendation next week.
He is set to be sentenced March 8 in Virginia and March 13 in Washington.
Mueller’s office is not recommending a particular sentence for Manafort nor have they taken a position on whether his prison sentence should run consecutively or concurrently with a separate punishment he faces in tax fraud case.