Political Scandals

1 Sentence Down For Paul Manafort, 1 More To Go

The federal judge in Manafort's Washington, D.C., case will decide whether his two sentences should be served consecutively or concurrently.

1 Sentence Down For Paul Manafort, 1 More To Go
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Paul Manafort already knows he'll spend nearly four years in jail, but there's likely more prison time coming his way. 

On Thursday, a federal judge in Virginia sentenced Manafort to 47 months for his bank and tax fraud convictions. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., is scheduled to sentence Manafort on March 13 for two conspiracy counts. Those charges are linked to money laundering, his foreign lobbying for Ukraine, and witness tampering. 

The maximum sentence he faces is 10 years. Special counsel Robert Mueller's team didn't ask the judge for a specific sentence length. Instead, the government's sentencing memo focuses on what Manafort admitted to doing. The memo says Manafort "committed an array of felonies for over a decade" and said his witness tampering "went to the heart of the criminal justice system."

Manafort's legal team asked the judge for leniency. They said their client "accepted full responsibility" for his actions and described him as a "first time offender."

Not only will the D.C. judge decide how long Manafort's sentence should be, but she'll also decide whether to make it consecutive or concurrent with his other sentence. That means, whatever his sentence length, she could add it onto the 47 months he's already got, or she could allow him to serve both sentences at the same time.