In a plea for a lenient sentence Paul Manafort’s lawyers told Judge Amy Berman Jackson today that Manafort had spent “a lifetime promoting American democratic values and assisting emerging democracies to adopt reforms necessary to become a part of Western society.”
It will rightly seem galling to many. But, that boilerplate aside, the substance of Manafort’s argument is really the only one he could possibly make: that the Special Counsel ruined his life looking for evidence of collusion which, he claims, they never found. It is at least true that they did not charge him for any such crime. He claims that FARA violations are almost never criminally prosecuted — a good deal of truth in that. And without that, a bunch of the other crimes either never would have been found or prosecuted.
It’s a pretty weak but really the only plausible argument he could make.
If the upshot of the Mueller “report” is that he didn’t find the goods on Trump or his associates, I think there’s a pretty good chance Trump will pardon Manafort.
