A federal judge determined Wednesday former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort intentionally lied to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators, thus breaching the terms of his plea agreement.
Due to ruling in Washington, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Mueller’s team is no longer obligated to support a shorter prison sentence for Manafort.
Mueller’s team accused Manafort of lying to investigators in November after he pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiracy against the U.S. Manafort’s team claimed he did not lie but rather exhibited a “lack of consistency” when he met with federal investigators 12 times since he accepted the plea deal in September.
Berman Jackson found Mueller’s team was able to make an adequate case that Manafort lied on three of the five occasions they had cited.
The judge said Manafort intentionally lied about his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian employee of Manafort’s political consulting firm who the FBI claims has ties to Russian intelligence. Manafort met twice during the campaign with Kilimnik.
Manafort was also found to have lied about a wire transfer made to a firm he had working for him in 2017 and “information pertinent to another Department of Justice investigation.”
Mueller’s team failed to make the case that Manafort purposefully lied about “Kilimnik’s role in the obstruction of justice conspiracy” and his “contacts” with the Trump administration.
Manafort was first convicted in August on eight counts of bank and tax fraud by a jury in Virginia. In September, he pleaded guilty in a second trial in Washington to two counts of conspiracy.
Manafort faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.
