Manafort expected to receive lengthy sentence for "serious" crimes

Paul Manafort, Trump's onetime campaign chairman, to be sentenced on fraud charges
March 7, 2019, 9:18 AM MST
By Dartunorro Clark

Paul Manafort, the longtime political operative who served as chairman of President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, is expected to be sentenced Thursday in Virginia federal court on tax and bank fraud charges.

Federal guidelines call for Manafort, 69, to spend 19-and-a-half to 24 years in prison, though the judge is free to impose a sentence below that range. In a sentencing memo to Judge T.S. Ellis last month, prosecutors called the charges against Manafort "serious, longstanding, and bold," adding that the offenses were so serious that "the government has not located a comparable case with the unique array of crimes and aggravating factors."

"Manafort acted for more than a decade as if he were above the law, and deprived the federal government and various financial institutions of millions of dollars,” prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller wrote in the memo. “The sentence here should reflect the seriousness of these crimes.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/paul-manafort-trump-s-onetime-campaign-chairman-be-sentenced-fraud-n980496

Apparently, the only lawyers Trump hired were those willing to commit or conceal "serious" crimes.