WASHINGTON �� Special counsel Robert Mueller recommended Friday that Paul Manafort serve 19 to 24 years in prison for tax and bank fraud, asking for a particularly harsh sentence for the 69-year-old former chairman of the Trump presidential campaign.
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III should impose harsh punishment on Manafort, Mueller's prosecutors urged. They also asked the judge to set a sentencing date. Ellis will decide a prison term after Manafort is sentenced March 13 in Washington, where he pleaded guilty to related charges.
The special counsel's request contains his first public musings on the severity of the eight felonies of which Manafort was found guilty in a jury trial in August. Those counts included bank fraud, tax fraud and failure to file a foreign bank account disclosure form with the U.S.
"His criminal decisions were not momentary or limited in time," Mueller's team said in its filing. "They were routine. And Manafort's repeated misrepresentations to financial institutions were brazen, at least some of which were made at a time when he was the subject of significant national attention."
Manafort didn't commit his crimes out of necessity or hardship, prosecutors said. He was well-educated, professionally successful and financially well off. He nonetheless cheated the U.S. Treasury out of more than $6 million in taxes at a time when he had substantial resources, they said, and committed bank fraud because his lavish spending had exhausted his substantial cash resources when his overseas income dwindled.
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(David Voreacos reported from New York.)
