Paul Manafort, Trump's ex-campaign chair, sentenced to 43 more months in prison and faces new charges

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort wassentenced to a total of seven and a half years in prison Wednesday after a federal judge rejected his appeal for no additional time andrebuked him for his crimes and years of lies.

Within minutes of the sentencing, prosecutors in New York announcedManafort has been indictedon 16 new charges, including residential mortgagefraud.

Manhattan District AttorneyCyrus Vance announced that the new charges were filed in state Supreme Court last Thursday, alleging Manafort andothers falsifiedbusiness records to illegally obtain millions of dollars.

At Wednesday's hearing,U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Manafort to nearly 3 years in prison on charges that he misled the U.S. government about his foreign lobbying work and encouragedwitnesses to lie on his behalf. That's on top ofthe roughly four-year sentence he received last weekin a separate case in Virginia.

Manafort, 69, facedup to 10 additional years in prisonafter pleadingguilty in Washingtonto two counts of conspiracy against the United States thatincluded a range ofconduct, from money laundering to unregistered lobbying, and asecond count related to witness tampering.

Hewas convicted of bankand tax fraud inVirginia, where a judge last week sentenced him to 47 months inprison for tax evasion and other financial crimes. That sentence wasfar below sentencing guidelines that allowed for more thantwo decades in prison, prompting national debate about disparitiesin how rich and poor defendants are treated by the criminal justicesystem.

Jackson said at the outset of the hearing that she would not be swayed by last Thursday'ssentence by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis.

Manafort, who hasgout, a form of arthritis, entered Jackson's courtroom in a wheelchair.

Jackson ruled Manafort should get a tougher sentencebecause he acted in a leadership role, directing others to participate in a crime, rejecting a defence argument that thesentencing enhancement should only apply to those who leadcriminal organizations.

But she said Manafort should get creditfor acceptance of responsibility, because he pleaded guilty tothe conduct at issue.

Remorse rings hollow

A prosecutor with special counsel Robert Mueller's office saidManafort didn't deserve any credit because he repeatedly lied toinvestigators andthe grand jury after his guilty plea.

But defence lawyer Thomas Zehnle saidManafort has "comeforward" to take responsibility, and the topics he's accusedof lying about are about different ones from the crimes he admittedto."

Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann did not recommend a particular punishment for Manafort, but delivered a scathing assessment of Manafort's crimes,saying he concealed his foreign lobbying work, laundered millions ofdollars and even coached other witnesses to lie.

Weissmann said Manafort's crimes undermined the rule of law andcommitted crimes that "go to heart of the American criminal justicesystem."

He said Manafort's upbringing and education could have led him toan exemplary life, but that at each turn, "Mr. Manafort chose totake a different path."

Unlike at his sentencing hearing last week, Manafort said hewas sorry for his actions, but Jackson then told him his expression of remorse rang hollow.

"I am sorry for what I have done and for all the activitiesthat have gotten us here today," Manafortsaid.

"This case has taken everything from me already myproperties, my cash, my life insurance, trust accounts for my children and grandchildren, and even more."

Jackson told Manafort that hehad lied repeatedly and committed fraud repeatedly, and therewas no good explanation for the leniency he sought.

"Saying 'I'm sorry I got caught' is not an inspiring pleafor leniency," Jackson said.

"The defendant's insistence that none of this should behappening to him ... is just one more thing that is inconsistent with the notion of any genuine acceptance of responsibility,"the judge said.

She sentenced Manafort to60 months on the first count, half of which wouldrun concurrently with the Virginia case,and 13 months on thesecond count, to be served consecutivelyadding43 months on top of the 47 months he received in the Virginia case.

That's a total of seven and halfyears in prison, minus credit he is expected to get for nine months already served.

Jackson ruled on Feb. 13 that Manafort had breached hisagreement in the Washington case to co-operate with Mueller'soffice by lying to prosecutors about three matters pertinent tothe Russia probe including his interactions with a businesspartner they said has ties to Russian intelligence.

Jailed since June

Jackson's sentence may mark the end of a two-year-old legalbattle between Manafort, a veteran Republican political operative who worked for Trump's campaign for five months in 2016, and Mueller, who made exposing Manafort's covert lobbyingfor pro-Kremlin politicians in Ukraine a centrepiece of hisRussia probe.

Manafort's lawyers noted that none of the Mueller's chargesagainst him related to the special counsel's core mandate:
collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

"But for a short stint as a campaign manager in apresidential election, I don't think we'd be here today,"Manafort lawyer Kevin Downing told Jackson, and asked her totake media coverage of the case into account in determining the sentence.

On Tuesday night, Mueller's prosecutors updated ajudge on the status of co-operation provided by one defendant,former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and are expected todo the same later in the week for Rick Gates, Trump's former deputy campaign manager.

The Mueller team has prosecuted Manafort in both Washington andVirginia related to his foreign consulting work on behalf of apro-Russia Ukrainian political party.

The decision last week by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III to sentenceManafort to 47 months stunned many who'd been following the case, given both the guideline calculation of 19.5 to 24 years in prisonand the fact that the defendant was convicted of hiding millions ofdollars from the IRS in undisclosed foreign bank accounts.

But Ellismade clear during the sentencing hearing that he found thegovernment's sentencing guidelines unduly harsh and declared his ownsentence "sufficiently punitive."

"If anybody in this courtroom doesn't think so, go and spend aday in the jail or penitentiary of the federal government," Ellissaid. "Spend a week there."

Manafort has been jailed since last June, when Berman Jacksonrevoked his house arrest over allegations that he and Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian-Ukrainian political consultant,sought to influence witnesses by trying to get them to testify in acertain way.

Trump has not ruled out a presidential pardon for Manafort,and after last week's sentencing said "I feel very badly" for his former aide.

Trump, as president, can issue pardons for federal crimes, but not for state offences.