Trump Ex-Campaign Chief Paul Manafort to Serve 43 More Months in Jail

By Staff, Agencies

US President Donald Trump's former campaign chief Paul Manafort, already facing 47 months in prison for tax and bank fraud, was sentenced to an additional 43 months in prison Wednesday on conspiracy charges.

According to US District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson while delivering the sentence in a hushed courtroom: "The defendant is not public enemy number one."

"But he is not a victim either," Jackson noted, adding that the veteran Republican lobbyist had shown little remorse and had lied repeatedly.

Manafort's case is the highest-profile yet stemming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Meanwhile, Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen is also set to serve time for fraud, tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and lying to Congress.

Cohen said Trump directed him to lie about hush payments made to a porn actress to silence her claims of a 2006 affair with the then real estate tycoon.

He said Trump knew in advance in mid-2016 that WikiLeaks would publish emails stolen from rival Hillary Clinton's campaign by the Russians.

Cohen further asserted that lawyers for Trump and his family reviewed and edited his written testimony to Congress in 2017 in which he lied about a Moscow real estate deal that was negotiated through the 2016 presidential election.

His testimony, however, produced no fresh evidence that Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia during the election, the subject of Mueller's investigation.