By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
As the old idiom goes, Paul Manafort is in hot water.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of D.C. ruled Wednesday that the former Trump campaign chairman, who had been cooperating with authorities, lied to prosecutors with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III about the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post reports.
Manafort, 69, breached his cooperation deal with prosecutors by lying after his guilty plea by lying about some things including “his interactions and communications with [Konstantin] Kilimnik,” a longtime aide whom the FBI assessed to have ties to Russian intelligence, the Post reports.
That could add years to his sentence.
Some legal observers say his only hope at this point is getting a pardon from the president. The optics of that would be terrible, but they’re seldom good in such situations.
