Paul Manafort associate Rick Gates was sentenced Tuesday to three years of probation and 45 days in jail, which he will be allowed to serve on weekends. He was also ordered to pay a $20,000 fine.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson noted that, in weighing the sentence, she also had to consider the signal it would send to others who committed similar crimes.
“This is what I’ve been struggling with in anticipation of this sentencing for a long time,” she said, according to Politico.
Jackson notes the sentence isn't just for the defendant but also what it says for others who commit same crimes. “This is what I’ve been struggling with in anticipation of this sentencing for a long time," she says.
— Darren Samuelsohn (@dsamuelsohn) December 17, 2019
Gates served as deputy chair for the 2016 Trump campaign, and, before that, as a key business partner of Manafort during his lobbying efforts in Ukraine.
Unlike Manafort, however, Gates began cooperating with prosecutors early in Robert Mueller’s Russia probe and continued to do so for more than 21 months after pleading guilty to conspiring against the United States and lying to the FBI.
“Gates’s information alone warranted, even demanded further investigation from the standpoint of national security, the integrity of our elections, and enforcing criminal laws,” Jackson said in court, The Washington Post reported. She called the former Manafort deputy “hardly a minor player.”
Gates asked Jackson last week for only probation, and not prison time, and lawyers for the Department of Justice agreed.
In a sentencing memo, prosecutors noted that Gates “worked assiduously” to cooperate and provided “substantial assistance in the investigation and prosecution of others.” Among those he testified against were Manafort and Roger Stone.
Prosecutors also noted Gates had had resisted attempts to block his cooperation in the first place.
“Gates received pressure not to cooperate with the government, including assurances of monetary assistance,” prosecutors wrote.
Prosecutors noted at the sentencing hearing Tuesday that Manafort told Gates there would be legal defense funds available if Gates rejected a plea deal, Politico’s Darren Samuelsohn reported.
So while I know this guy gave a lot of good information, this is why impeachment isn’t exactly the hottest issue on the planet. The optics (however inaccurate) are gonna appear to the average, not paying attention, American that none of this is a big deal.
Remember that I’m saying the not-paying-attention American. These are the ones they call for the polls asking about impeachment.
I’m grateful for his input, but I’m not sure this helps the cause all that much.
I’d say this sentence is bad news for Flynn. What Gates got has to be a floor to what Flynn will get in sentencing - no way Flynn’s judge will give him less.
At this point, I despair that we will ever find out Flynn’s sentence. He should already be in prison, sentenced and done.
You know who wasn’t sentenced to 45 days in jail and three years probation?
Hillary Clinton.
Nor any time. But that won’t stop the GOP from trying.
They will exhume her body after her demise and try her, if they thought it would make the base happy