Closing out the special counsel’s highest-profile prosecution, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of U.S. District Court in Washington will sentence Manafort, 69, on two conspiracy counts that each carry a maximum term of five years. The charges, to which Manafort pleaded guilty last fall, encompass a host of crimes including money laundering and obstruction of justice.
Jackson will be weighing an unusual set of circumstances. She is expected to consider not only the conspiracy charges but also the fact that Manafort lied to prosecutors after he agreed in September to cooperate with their inquiry into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether any Trump associates conspired.
The judge has ruled that Manafort breached his plea agreement by lying, but prosecutors have not publicly disclosed why they consider those lies important, saying they wanted to protect an open investigation. That might make it harder for Jackson, who takes pride in explaining herself in terms that ordinary people can understand, to describe how she arrived at her sentence.
In another oddity, Manafort’s prosecution was divided into two cases — the one before Jackson, and a related case overseen by Judge T.S. Ellis III of U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. Last week, Ellis sentenced Manafort to 47 months in prison for eight felony counts of tax evasion, bank fraud and failure to disclose a foreign bank account.
Because one of the conspiracy counts in Washington stems from the same criminal scheme as the Virginia case, some legal experts say they doubt that Jackson will sentence Manafort to the maximum term of 10 years to run consecutively with the Virginia prison term. Instead, some predicted, she will most likely allow Manafort to serve his sentences simultaneously, which would cap his prison term at 10 years.
Hanging over the entire case has been the chance that President Donald Trump could pardon Manafort.
Asked about a pardon Monday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said, “The president has made his position on that clear, and he’ll make a decision when he is ready.”
State prosecutors in Manhattan are said to be preparing charges against Manafort to help ensure he will serve prison time even if Trump pardons him for his federal crimes.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.