Actually we shouldn’t be surprised….
The guy was on Manafort’s side from the jump….
He was dissing the Mueller lawyers for even charging Manafort despite Manafort lying, working with foreign countries against America interests and other things like bank fraud and hiding money from the Government…..
Kinda reminds ya that things ain’t on the level for regular folks, eh?
The sentencing of Paul Manafort, former chairman of President Trump’s campaign, was highly anticipated, capping a significant chapter in Robert S. Mueller III’s special counsel investigation. But it was an unlikely candidate to become the latest example of a conflict that has vexed legal professionals and activists for decades: systemic inequality in the criminal justice system.
Yet, as a federal judge handed down his sentence in jam-packed Alexandria, Va., courtroom Thursday, and observers digested the judge’s decision — 47 months — Manafort’s case was immediately perceived as a high-profile instance of the justice system working one way for a wealthy, well-connected man, while working in another, harsher, way for indigent defendants facing lesser crimes.
“Paul Manafort’s lenient 4-year sentence — far below the recommended 20 years despite extensive felonies and post-conviction obstruction — is a reminder of the blatant inequities in our justice system that we all know about, because they reoccur every week in courts across America,” said Ari Melber, a legal analyst for NBC News, in a Thursday-night tweet.
Under federal sentencing guidelines, Manafort faced up to 24 years in prison for bank fraud and for cheating on his taxes, yet U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis said that calculation was “excessive.” Manafort’s crime’s were “very serious,” Ellis said, but they didn’t warrant a punishment that could keep the 69-year-old imprisoned into his 90s.
Duncan Levin, a former federal prosecutor and expert in financial crimes, said Manafort’s sentence was very light “by any stretch of the imagination.” Manafort, who once agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors but then was found to have lied to them, got a sentence that resembled someone’s who did not renege on their cooperation agreement, Levin said.
“His crimes went on for an extremely long time, at the very highest levels of our government and deeply affected our democracy,” Levin told The Washington Post. “To get away with it for such a short sentence is something that is absolutely mind-boggling.”……