Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/07/manafort-3.html
Trump’s former campaign chief faced up to 25 years in prison, was sentenced to less than four.
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Seems light given the sentencing guidelines. Though he still has two charges outstanding that Mueller May recommend not be concurrent.
But - no ankle bracelet afterwards and professional limitations?
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Effing absurd. A blameless life. Wtf? The guy was up every dictators asshole.
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Maybe the Judge was just confusing “blame” with “accountability.”
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Come on consecutive sentencing!!!
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Unfortunately even if the next judge goes for the maximum sentence (10 years) and opts to make him serve consecutively he’ll still get less than the sentencing guidelines for this trial recommended.
I guess we just have to hope the “ailing man unlikely to survive a long sentence” bit isn’t just an act.
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Yeah - but he’s 85 when…if he gets out.
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Wow, I would think that undermining the democracy of at least 2 countries would be a multiplier, not a mitigation.
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There’s that risk. I’m surprised he didn’t show up with a oxygen bottle
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He did not get off as lightly as Jeff Epstein, at least. Fucking hell.
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Reminds me of that story arc from The Sopranos in which Uncle Junior fakes senility to help beat a racketeering charge but actually starts experiencing dementia not long after getting out.
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You know, there are studies on the negative effect of incarceration on mental health. Something to consider re Manafort. Maybe it’ll make him totally crazy and result in he being driven honest and ethical.
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I was going to link the last scene of The Usual Suspects…
But Kevin Spacey.
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Yup, otherwise blameless life, paid for and completely based on his unmitigated decades long crime spree 
I’m guessing that an “otherwise blameless life” is only a consideration to rich people. Poor people committing multiple felonies, or even one felony, not so much.
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Marketing at work. If the wealthy were actually held to the same standards of morality and ethics as the poor, the rest of us might start questioning whether the wealthy really deserve to keep their wealth.
“What is the point of being wealthy if one must obey the same laws as the poor?”
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Rich white man judges other rich white male to be mostly great.
Our judiciary is so deeply and profoundly fucked. All the people I knew who went to law school (and everyone went to law school in the '90s), and not one of them a judge.
This doesn’t address the question of how we wound up with manifest garbage like Ellis on the bench, or how to rid ourselves of it, but does lay out a little hope for the next round:
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Yeah “he was a pretty upstanding guy except for all the crimes” is a kind of weird and almost certainly selectively-applied attitude to have during sentencing.
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He could be out on parole in time to work for Trump’s re-election campaign.
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