Trump news: President says 'I feel very bad' for Paul Manafort and launches emergency order to ground Boeing 737 MAX
The latest updates from Washington amid Paul Manafort's second sentencing hearing
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump denounced the “Witch Hunt Hoax” against him in a flurry of tweets on Wednesday, saying potential impeachment proceedings overlook “the minor fact I never did anything wrong” on the day his ex-campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was sentenced in a second federal hearing to 73 additional months in prison.
The president tweeted thanks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her opposition to impeachment, which she considers “too divisive”, and took aim at New York’s state’s governor Andrew Cuomo, new attorney-general Letitia James and her predecessor, Eric Schneiderman for issuing subpoenas related to his business dealings.
Manafort was last week given 47 months in jail by a court in Virginia after pleading guilty to bank and tax fraud and this time faces up to 10 years behind bars for conspiracy against the US and obstruction of justice.
On Wednesday, a federal judge sentenced Manafort to more than three and a half additional years in prison. That’s on top of the roughly four-year sentence he received in a separate case in Virginia last week.
The sentence followed a scathing assessment by the judge and a prosecutor of Manafort’s crimes. After Manafort was sentenced in federal court Wednesday, an indictment was unsealed in New York charging him with state crimes, including a residential mortgage fraud scheme.
Mr Trump said he feels “very badly” for his former campaign chairman following the sentencing.
“On a human basis, it’s a very sad thing," the president said.
Mr Trump also insisted he’s not currently considering a Manafort pardon, saying, “I have not even given it a thought as of this moment.”
The Manafort news arrived as Mr Trump was forced to announce an emergency order grounding a fleet of Boeing planes after a 737 MAX 8 plane was once again involved in a deadly crash.
Additional reporting by AP. Read The Independent's live coverage from Wednesday below:
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“Its hard to overstate the number of lies, the amount of fraud, and the extraordinary amount of money involved," Judge Amy Berman Jackson said about Paul Manafort on Wednesday.
She is expected to hand down her sentencing any moment.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson slammed Paul Manafort for a career filled with "spin" before delivering her sentencing.
The judge is criticising Paul Manafort for lying to the American public and Congress:
The judge said Paul Manafort has spent his career "gaming the system" and manipulating the truth:
"All of this appeared to reflect his ongoing contempt for and the belief that he had the right to manipulate these proceedings, and the court order did not apply to him,” Judge Amy Berman Jackson said on Wednesday.
She added, “Court is one of those places where facts still matter."
Judge Amy Berman Jackson has dismissed claims from the defence memo regarding Russian collision, saying “It's hard to understand why an attorney would write that," adding, ”No collusion" is "simply a non-sequitur."
She then added that Paul Manafort's insistence the crimes have nothing to do with him is also "inconsistent with a genuine acceptance of responsibility."
Judge Amy Berman Jackson says the sentencing guidelines "overstates" the seriousness of the offence in question:
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