NO CHAMPAGNE FOR BIG PAULIE!

U.S. District Judge Ellis stunned the legal profession by radically departing downward from established sentencing guidelines in the Virginia segment of the Manafort cases. The guidelines called for a term of 19-24 years for the eight felonies for which the jury found Big Paulie guilty, but the judge gave him just under four years, (minus time served, which means he owes but 3+ more years on those convictions.) In dealing out that light sentence for the eight felony convictions, Judge Ellis made the remarkable statement that Paul Manafort had led "an otherwise blameless life."

That statement is contradicted not only by Mueller's arguments to the court, but, more important, by Manafort's own on-the-record confessions!

To refresh recollections, here is the chronology:

1. Manafort was charged, in the Virginia District Court, with 18 counts of tax fraud, hidden foreign bank accounts, bank fraud, etc. That case was assigned to Judge Ellis.

2. While that case was pending, Mueller charged Manafort with conspiracy and other crimes in the District of Columbia. These were crimes that did not occur in Virginia, and therefore could not be prosecuted there. Manafort rejected the offer to waive his venue objections and put the two cases together in D.C. and thereby avoid two trials. The D.C. case was assigned to Judge Jackson.

3. While many of his Trump colleagues elected to cooperate and plead guilty to charges brought by Mueller, Manafort elected to tough it out and go to trial in the Virginia case. (My view, then and now:  he had nothing to lose, cuz he was sure to get pardoned no matter what happened.) At trial, while Judge Ellis frequently exhibited hostility to the prosecution, the jury nevertheless found Big Paulie guilty on 8 felony counts, and hung on the other ten because of a single juror holdout. Mueller, with eight "heavy sentence" felony convictions in his pocket, elected not to re-try the other ten counts.

4. While Manafort was awaiting trial in D.C., he obstructed justice and engaged in witness tampering, and was obliged by Judge Jackson to spend all his time in solitary confinement (where he is today.)

5. Manafort then folded, or at least feigned doing so. He signed on to a cooperation agreement with Mueller and pleaded guilty to a two-count felony information in the D.C. District Court.

6. But Manafort then violated the cooperation agreement, and Mueller withdrew his obligation to suggest the court lighten his sentence. Manafort demanded a hearing on the subject, and got one. Judge Jackson found Big Paulie had indeed violated his promise of cooperation.

7. Next came this week's Virginia sentencing in which Judge Ellis said that, beyond the eight convictions in his court, Manafort "has lived an otherwise blameless life." That statement is stunning for a number of reasons:

   i) In the cooperation agreement, made after his Virginia trial, Manafort confessed that he was indeed guilty of the ten hung charges in that trial! Those ten charges included hidden foreign bank accounts, bank fraud, and more. Ten additional felonies. All confessed before the Ellis statement of "an otherwise blameless life."

   ii)  Then there's the not-so-blameless-life D.C. charges to which Manafort has pleaded guilty. They include a) obstruction of justice and witness tampering while in jail awaiting trial, and b) a conspiracy involving money laundering, more tax fraud, more unreported foreign bank accounts.  All of this on the record before
Ellis made that statement. It was not up to Ellis to sentence on the D.C. charges, but as long as he was going outside the Virginia trial record to fashion a sentence, how could he ignore Manafort's confessions of other criminal conduct?

iii) And let's not forget Judge Jackson's findings of Manafort's duplicity in abrogating his promise of cooperation. (Oh, did I forget to mention that while he was "cooperating" with Mueller, Big Paulie was reporting to emissaries of the Boss in the White House?)

So what's gonna happen now?

First, I know zilch about Mueller's appellate rights. Whatever they are, my guess is he won't exercise them.

Second, I foresee Judge Jackson lowering the hammer, but her options are cabined by the fact there are only two counts before her. (Well played, Paulie!) That could still yield as much as an additional ten years, which would be as extreme on the high end as Ellis's sentence was on the low end.

But, as I said, Judges Ellis's and Jackson's sentencing decisions are irrelevant. Big Paulie will do 19 months. That will take him to just after election day, 2020, which is Pardon Time for the entire TCF.

But the no-alcohol restrictions of the federal Bureau of Prisons are not the only reasons there is no champagne for Big Paulie on the horizon.  Trump's pardon will not reach state bank fraud and other state crimes for which Manafort was not charged, or for which he went to trial and the jury hung. And he has no defense to some of those because he admitted in writing that he committed them!

Now if New York and Virginia state prosecutors can get their shit together before the various statutes of limitations run down, we can get some justice done around here!

A bientot!