By Steve Neavling

The Justice Department’s inspector general has notified lawmakers that he will examine how the Trump administration handled the prison terms of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. 

Inspector General Michael Horowitz told lawmakers about the review in a Jan. 19 letter obtained by Insider. 

Due to health issues, Cohen was released to home confinement in May 2020 but was sent back to prison in July 2020. In a lawsuit filed in December 2021, Cohen alleged he was sent back to prison in retaliation for criticizing Trump.  

By contrast, former Trump campaign official Paul Manafort was released to home confinement in May 2020 and not sent back to prison. He was serving a nearly four year sentence for tax and bank fraud. 

In a letter to the inspector general in May 2020, U.S. Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Hakem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Manafort received “disparate treatment” compared to other federal inmates who were not sent back to prison. 

“This outrageous, unconstitutional behavior by the Justice Department and BOP must stop,” the lawmakers wrote.

In the letter to lawmakers, Horowitz pledged to review the issue but failed to promise a full investigation. 

Cohen told Insider he was disappointed with Horowitz’s response. 

“This non-acknowledgment acknowledgment is far less than what I was hoping for after 18 months of neglect,” Cohen said. “This letter should have merely apologized for the delay, as it did, and stated emphatically that the OIG is opening an investigation into the unconstitutional remand of me back to Otisville.”

Cohen said a full investigation would show “that former President Trump and his complicit attorney general, Bill Barr, spearheaded this violation of my First Amendment right — proving my statement that Trump did not want to be president of the United States but rather an autocrat, dictator, monarch and/or supreme leader.”

By Steve Neavling

President Trump has pardoned two more former aides and associates ensnared in Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation of Russian election inference. 

Trump on Wednesday issued pardons to his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his longtime adviser Roger Stone. Both were convicted in the Mueller probe. 

Stone, whose sentence Trump commuted earlier this year, was convicted in November 2019 of lying to the House Intelligence Committee. Manafort was convicted of financial crimes in connection with his overseas lobbying work and was sentenced to more than seven years in prison. 

On Tuesday, Trump pardoned his former foreign policu adviser George Papadopoulos and Dutch lawyer Alex van der Zwaan, both of whom were convicted of lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation. 

Among those not pardoned in connection with the Mueller probe were Manafort’s deputy Rick Gates, who was sentenced last year to 45 days in prison after cooperating with prosecutors, and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney who pleaded guilty to campaign finance laws. 

“The pardons from this President are what you would expect to get if you gave the pardon power to a mob boss,” tweeted Andrew Weissmann, a Mueller team member who helped prosecute Manafort.

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates was sentenced Tuesday to 45 days in jail and three years probation for lying to the FBI and conspiring to conceal tens of millions of dollars.

Gates, 47, had faced up to six years in prison, but a federal judge in Washington D.C. showed leniency because of Gates’ help providing information for the special counsel probe.

“He’s had to testify, be identified as a known cooperator in the glare of public attention at a time of deep political division in our society, when people are demonized for being on the other side, and he was seen as turning on his own side,” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said, The New York Times reports. “Gates’ information alone warranted, even demanded further investigation from the standpoint of national security, the integrity of our elections and enforcing criminal laws.”

Gates, who pleaded guilty in February 2018, will be able to serve his sentence on weekends, the judge said. Gates also was ordered to pay a $20,000 fine and perform 300 hours of community service.

“I greatly regret the mistakes that I have made, and I have worked hard to honor my commitment to make amends,” Gates said in a prepared statement.

In a sentencing recommendation, Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston complimented Gates for his assistance in the investigation.

“Under exceedingly difficult circumstances and under intense public scrutiny, Gates has worked earnestly to provide the government with everything it has asked of him and has fulfilled all obligations under his plea agreement,” Gaston wrote this month.

Gates’ attorney, Thomas Green, asked for probation and community service for his client.

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday morning in federal court in Washington D.C.

Gates, 47, who pleaded guilty in February 2018 to lying to the FBI and conspiring to conceal tens of millions of dollars, had faced possible jail time.

Gates had been facing up to six years in prison, but he may get no time behind bars because of what federal prosecutors said was his “extraordinary assistance” in the special counsel investigation, The Washington Post reports.

“Under exceedingly difficult circumstances and under intense public scrutiny, Gates has worked earnestly to provide the government with everything it has asked of him and has fulfilled all obligations under his plea agreement,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston wrote in a sentencing recommendation this month.

Gates’ attorney, Thomas Green, asked for probation and community service for his client.

“We submit that Richard Gates has accepted responsibility for his misconduct in every way possible,” Green wrote.

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he was stunned by the “incredibly lenient sentence”  ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort received in Alexandria, Va. last Thursday.

“Well, I was really surprised by the sentence he was given,” McCabe told Face the Nation. “I think it was an incredibly lenient sentence.”

“Like most people, I was shocked,” he added.

Manafort got 47-months in prison, far short of the 19-24 years suggested in sentencing guidelines.

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

DETROIT — Outrage is voiced about a 47-month prison sentence for former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, whose federeal penalty for bank and insurance frauds falls far short of the 19-24 years suggested in sentencing guidelines. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III on Thursday called the guidelines “vindictive” and “way out of whack.”

But ex-Detroit U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, who now teaches law at the University of Michigan, sees something far more troubling than the judge did. She thinks class and racism are at play, and that Manafort may have benefited from being a privileged white guy.

She writes in The Daily Beast:

In the case of Manafort, I believe that the drastic variance from the guidelines range has little to do with Manafort’s connections to Trump, though Judge Ellis openly expressed hostility to the special counsel and its prosecution of Manafort throughout the case. Instead, I think it reflects the class and racial disparities that exist in the criminal-justice system.

As a former federal prosecutor, I have often seen white-collar defendants receive sentences below the calculated guidelines range. This practice sends a terrible message that wealthy and powerful defendants are treated differently than other defendants. I didn’t see many drastic drops from the guidelines in sentences for indigent defendants.

During his sentencing hearing, the closest Manafort came to contrition was saying that he felt shame and suggesting he had already been punished. This is a common trope from white-collar crime defendants, who suggest that they don’t need to go to prison because their loss of income and status in the community is punishment enough. They submit letters of support that their expensive lawyers have billed many hours gathering from prominent people to praise their good works.

Indigent defendants, on the other hand, don’t receive leniency because they have suffered harm to their status in their community. Their overworked court-appointed lawyers don’t have the resources to collect letters, nor do the defendants know the kinds of prominent people who might persuade a judge to impose a lower sentence. We fill our prisons for lengthy periods of incarceration with disadvantaged people with few economic opportunities, but defendants whose crimes are motivated by nothing more than greed are the ones who get a break. The sentence imposed by Judge Ellis appears to reflect that tendency.

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

The Mueller probe has produced endless streams of intriguing information.

Can there be more to come on Friday?

The Mueller team is set to to file a sentencing memorandum in U.S. District Court in D.C. in the Paul Manafort case before midnight Friday, CNN reports. Sentencing is set for March 13.

The network reports prosecutors could outline all the juicy facts in the case including Manafort’s criminal business schemes, his attempt to reach out to key contacts after his arrest and the lies he told to prosecutors and a grand jury after he agreed to cooperate with the Mueller investigation.

By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com

Lawyers for Paul Manafort, the convicted former campaign boss for President Trump, claimed Wednesday that Robert Mueller’s prosecutors have unfairly accused him of lying to them after he entered a plea deal.

Mueller’s team has alleged Manafort breached his plea agreement by lying to prosecutors about his contacts with Trump administration officials and his interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, who has alleged ties to Russian intelligence.

Manafort’s attorneys argued in a court filing that Mueller failed to show that Manafort “intentionally provided false information.”

Manafort, 69, has been in solitary confinement and faces sentencing in two different cases.