Judge TS Ellis said he believes the recommended sentence of 19 to 24 years for Paul Manafort would be “excessive” and hit the former Trump campaign chairman with a nearly 4-year sentence instead on Thursday. The judge gave Manafort a sentence of 47 months after noting that Manafort had “lived an otherwise blameless life,” and was a good friend and generous person to others. But Ellis added that those attributes did not erase his crimes. Manafort will receive a second sentence next week from a different federal judge for the two crimes he pleaded guilty to last year: witness tampering and conspiracy related to his Ukraine lobbying work and money laundering.
