Manafort’s sentencing set....

Manafort’s Virginia sentencing set for March 8

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN

A federal judge on Thursday scheduled Paul Manafort to be sentenced March 8 for financial malfeasance in Virginia. It's one of two court hearings coming up next month that could send the former Trump campaign chairman to prison for the rest of his life.

U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III in a one-page order set out the sentencing plan for the 69-year-old Manafort, whom a jury in Northern Virginia convicted last summer on eight felony counts of bank and tax fraud.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors brought the case against Manafort and told Ellis last Friday that federal guidelines call for Manafort to get as long as 24½ years in prison in the Virginia case.

Manafort also awaits a March 13 sentencing date in a separate Mueller-led case in Washington, where he pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and has since been hit with additional charges of lying to federal prosecutors and a grand jury during his cooperation sessions. Mueller’s office must submit to District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson a sentencing memo recommending a length for Manafort’s prison sentence in that case by Friday.

In Virginia, Ellis had scheduled Manafort’s sentencing for early February but the hearing was postponed until attorneys resolved a dispute over the longtime GOP operative’s cooperation testimony. Jackson ruled last week that Manafort had purposefully lied about several important subjects, voiding the plea deal and allowing Mueller to suggest a more stringent sentence.

Both judges are likely to have a say in how Manafort serves his prison time from both the D.C. and Virginia cases. Mueller had agreed in the plea deal to recommend that Manafort serve his D.C. sentence concurrent with his Virginia sentence. But with Jackson’s ruling last week, the special counsel is now free to suggest Manafort serve the sentences consecutively.

Manafort could be spared prison if he were to secure a presidential pardon, though the move would be a controversial one with Democrats in Congress already vowing to investigate any clemency moves tied to the Russia probe. Of a Manafort pardon, President Donald Trump said last November he “wouldn’t take it off the table.”