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Manafort doesn't deserve leniency, Mueller filing argues | TheHill

posted onFebruary 24, 2019
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Article snippet: Special counsel MORE should spend in prison for charges in Washington, D.C., but told the judge presiding over his case that he doesn’t deserve leniency. “Nothing about Manafort’s upbringing, schooling, legal education, or family and financial circumstances mitigates his criminality,” Mueller said in a heavily redacted sentencing memo released Saturday, which details Manafort’s crimes. In the document, originally filed under seal on Friday night, Mueller said that the onetime Trump campaign chairman agreed in his plea deal that anything less than the government’s 17.5 to 22-year estimated sentence is not warranted. The statutory maximum for the two counts of conspiracy Manafort agreed to plead guilty to as part of a plea deal to avoid a second criminal trial in D.C is 10 years. Mueller did not take a position on whether Manafort’s sentence in D.C. should run consecutively or concurrently with the sentence he's facing for separate charges in federal district court in the Eastern District of Virginia. "Based on his relevant sentencing conduct, Manafort presents many aggravating sentencing factors and no warranted mitigating factors," the filing states. "His criminal actions were bold, some of which were committed while under a spotlight due to his work as the campaign chairman and, later, while he was on bail from this Court," it adds. Prosecutors argued that Manafort's multiple lies to FBI agents and investigators working for the special counsel's office after his... Link to the full article to read more

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