Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Wednesday that her sentence for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort could not be a “revision” of the lenient sentence handed down by Judge T.S. Ellis days earlier. Jackson then sentenced Manafort to 73 months, less than prosecutors’ recommendation of up to 10 years behind bars.
When Manafort was convicted of financial fraud charges in Virginia, prosecutors recommended sentencing him up to 24 years—but instead, Ellis doled out just 47 months, citing what he called an “otherwise blameless” life (that actually included working for dictators and torturers). “What’s happening today cannot be a revision… of what happened in another court,” Jackson said in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, where Manafort faced separate charges of conspiracy against the U.S. and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
