Lawyers for President Donald Trump's former campaign chief Paul Manafort urged a judge on Friday to impose a sentence "substantially below" the potential 19 to 24 years in prison he is facing for tax crimes and bank fraud.
Manafort, 69, is to be sentenced on March 7 by Judge T S Ellis of the Eastern District of Virginia after being convicted of five counts of filing false income tax returns, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to report a foreign bank account.
Manafort's attorneys, in a filing with the judge, said the sentencing guidelines -- which call for a prison term of 235 to 293 months -- are "clearly disproportionate to the offence conduct for which Mr Manafort was convicted."
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