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Trump campaign ex-chief Manafort given more than 3.5 years of extra prison time

President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced on Wednesday to about 3-1/2 more years in prison for charges arising from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russia's role in the 2016 U.S. election, with the judge giving him a stern lecture about his lies and criminal behavior. The sentence by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington comes on top of a sentence by a different judge in Virginia last week and means that in total Manafort will spend six years and nine months behind bars, after being credited for nine months already served while the cases unfolded.

Published March 13,2019
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A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to an additional three and a half years of prison as she questioned his remorse and criticized him for his crimes and years of lies.

The sentence is on top of the roughly four-year prison sentence Manafort received last week in a separate criminal case in Virginia.

"It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the extraordinary amount of money involved," U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson told Manafort Wednesday before sentencing him on conspiracy charges related to his foreign lobbying work and witness tampering.

Manafort had asked for mercy, saying the criminal charges against him had "taken everything from me already." He pleaded with the judge not to impose any additional prison time.

"I am sorry for what I have done and all the activities that have gotten us here today," Manafort said in a calm and steady voice as he read from a written statement. "While I cannot undo the past, I will ensure that the future will be very different."

The 69-year-old, who arrived in court in a wheelchair, said he was the primary caregiver for his wife and wanted the chance for them to resume their life together.

"She needs me and I need her. I ask you to think of this and our need for each other as you deliberate," Manafort said. "This case has taken everything from me already — my properties, my cash, my life insurance, my trust accounts for my children and my grandchildren, and more."