Judge T.S. Ellis III on Thursday gave Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, a notably light prison sentence of less than four years, confounding experts and those who practice regularly in the federal courts.
Manafort, convicted last summer on charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and related criminality uncovered by special counsel Robert Mueller faced 19 to 24 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines.
The leniency shown by Ellis, of the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, toward Manafort carries the whiff of miscarriage of justice, especially given how the criminal justice system routinely treats people without Manafort’s wealth, influence or skin color.
No two sentences are alike — in the federal system and in the states, judges retain wide discretion to sentence defendants or could be hand-tied in the sentences they impose. But if the failed war on drugs and the era of mass incarceration have taught us anything, it is that there are two tracks of justice: one for those who can afford expensive defense counsel and who can move heaven and earth to receive mercy, and one for everyone else. People like Manafort, when caught cheating taxpayers of millions of dollars, receive discretion and kid-glove treatment, while drug dealers and less sophisticated defendants — in Ellis’ courtroom and elsewhere — are subject to draconian mandatory minimum sentences.
Perhaps Ellis, a veteran of the federal bench who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, bought the argument that Manafort was being targeted to ratchet up the pressure on others as part of the broader inquiry into Russia’s actions in the 2016 presidential campaign, as his lawyers put it to Ellis ahead of sentencing.
During a revealing moment early in Thursday’s hearing, Ellis said Manafort was “not before this court for anything having to do with collusion with the Russian government to influence this election.” This is true. But collusion, as Ellis surely knows, is not a federal crime, and it is not mentioned in the appointment order that gave Mueller his mandate in May 2017. Rather, it’s a term of art that President Donald Trump and his defenders have abused to misdirect the public about the true nature of the special counsel investigation.
Mueller, perhaps wisely, declined to make a specific sentencing recommendation for Manafort. But his office pulled no punches in laying out Manafort’s pattern of criminal conduct, his lack of remorse and his post-indictment behavior — all resulting in a revocation of his bail, new charges of obstruction of justice and the implosion of his plea agreement in a separate case, in Washington, D.C., for lying to prosecutors and the grand jury. (Manafort, who has admitted in that case to sharing polling data during the campaign with a Russian associate believed to have intelligence ties, will be sentenced in that case next week.)
“Manafort’s criminal conduct was serious, long-standing, and bold,” Mueller’s team told Ellis in a sentencing submission filed last month. “He failed to pay taxes in five successive years involving more than $16 million in unreported income — and failed to identify his overseas accounts in those same returns — resulting in more than $6 million in unpaid taxes.”
To federal prosecutors, Manafort “benefited from the protections and privileges of the law and the services of his government, while cheating it and his fellow citizens.”
That didn’t seem to matter much to Ellis, who indicated in court Thursday that Manafort led “an otherwise blameless life.” Did the judge read a word of Mueller’s sentencing memorandum and his later written rebuttal, in which lawyers for the special counsel chided Manafort’s halfhearted cooperation with prosecutors, his claim that he’s too old and frail to reoffend, and the lack of clarity that remains about his assets and ability to make taxpayers whole?
“Manafort’s effort to shift the blame to others — as he did at trial — is not consistent with acceptance of responsibility or a mitigating factor,” prosecutors wrote.
Amid the furor, including from former judges, over Ellis’ apparent lack of impartiality during the Manafort trial last year, I was among those who gave him the benefit of the doubt. Judges often play hardball with prosecutors and defense lawyers, my thinking went, and Ellis had already recognized, in declining to toss out Mueller’s indictment against Manafort ahead of trial, that the charges “clearly arise out of the special counsel’s investigation into the payments defendant allegedly received from Russian-backed leaders and pro-Russian political officials.”
Manafort has shown no contrition for his misdeeds, or for his recalcitrance since the special counsel first charged him. And Ellis ignored all that, doing a disservice to justice.
The judge’s mercy may be the closest Manafort will get to a presidential pardon. But that may not keep him from begging for one. Trump, who has praised Manafort as a “brave man” and lamented that his own Justice Department had charged Manafort with tax crimes that were only peripheral to the Russia investigation, has refused to rule it out.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.