Trump Pushes Team to Stick Up for 'Brave' Paul Manafort

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Manafort is facing a tough judge, and a possible 10-year sentence. But his perils have produced one potential advantage: the increasing sympathies of the man who could pardon him.

Erin Banco, Asawin Suebsaeng
03.10.19 9:12 PM ET

Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, is set to head back to court this week to be sentenced by Judge Amy Berman Jackson for conspiring against the U.S. and for a conspiracy to obstruct justice connected to his covert lobbying for foreign powers. He could face up to 10 years in prison for those crimes, on top of the 47 months he was given last week for fraud.

Manafort’s ever ballooning legal perils over the past two years have produced one potentially advantageous condition for him: the increasing sympathies of the man who possesses the power to pardon him.


It wasn’t long ago that Trump saw and berated Manafort as a nuisance and another expendable former adviser. In the first year of his presidency, Trump and his top aides went out of their way to downplay the former campaign chairman’s major role in the 2016 effort, with many on Team Trump privately blaming Manafort in part for federal investigators’ interest in the finances of the president’s family, and political and business associates.

According to sources close to the president, Trump never formed a rapport or comfort level of trust with Manafort during the campaign prior to his ouster. Trump viewed Manafort more as an irritating stage manager—one who brought with him a ton of baggage that would lead to President Trump and his White House team essentially disowning Manafort starting in early 2017. (Manafort “played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters in March of that year.)

Nowadays, however, Trump’s annoyance towards his onetime aide has been largely replaced with pity and attaboys. “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family,” the president posted to Twitter in August. “‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ - make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’ Such respect for a brave man!”

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