Paul Manafort found guilty of 8 of 18 counts ... and now faces real possibility of spending many years in federal prison

As the Washington Post reports here, a "jury has found former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty after a three-week trial on tax and bank fraud charges — a major if not complete victory for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as he continues to investigate the president’s associates." Here is more:

The jury convicted Manafort on eight of the 18 counts against him. The jury said it was deadlocked on the other 10. U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis declared a mistrial on those other charges. Manafort was convicted on five counts of filing false tax returns, one count of not filing a required IRS form, and two bank fraud counts....

The 18 charges in the Manafort trial centered around Manafort’s personal finances, and had little to do with the special counsel’s mandate of probing Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates conspired with those efforts. But the trial was the first to emerge from Mueller’s probe, and as such it marked a significant public test of his work. The jury deliberated for four days before announcing its verdict.

Over two weeks of testimony, more than two dozen witnesses, including his former right hand man Rick Gates, as well as his former bookkeeper and accountants, testified against Manafort. They said he hid millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts that went unreported to the IRS, and then later lied to banks in order to get millions of dollars in loans.

His lawyers had argued that Gates, not Manafort, was the real criminal, pointing to Gates’ admitted lies, theft, and infidelity. Gates pleaded guilty in February to lying to the FBI and conspiring against the United States, and has said he hopes to get a lesser prison sentence by cooperating against Manafort.

Prosecutors, in turn, told the jury that the most compelling evidence in the case were the dozens of documents, many of them emails, showing Manafort oversaw the false statements to the IRS and banks. Manafort, 69, called no witnesses at all, as his lawyer argued prosecutors had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended to defraud the government or banks. Manafort’s lawyers repeatedly suggested their client might not have known the law.

The trial featured heated arguments at times — not between the government and defense lawyers, but between U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis and prosecutors. The judge repeatedly chided prosecutors in front of the jury, though at the end of the trial he urged the panel not to consider during deliberations any opinions he may have expressed.

Manafort faces a second trial in September in Washington DC, on charges that he failed to register as a lobbyist for the Ukraine government, and conspired to tamper with witnesses in that case. Manafort has been in jail since June as a result of the witness tampering charges....

Prosecutors charge that from 2010 to 2014, Manafort hid more than $15 million from the IRS — money he made as a political consultant in Ukraine. When that income ended in 2014, authorities charge Manafort lied to banks to get millions of dollars more in loans to support his extravagant lifestyle.

I speculated in this post from last year around the time of his indictment that Manifort could be looking at a decade in prison or longer following a conviction based on the large loss amounts connected to various charges.  This split verdict does not change my prediction that the significant amounts of money involved here means Manafort will be facing a significant guideline range at sentencing.  But his advanced age (and some of the behavior by the trial judge) leads me to think he might have a real shot at securing a below-guideline (but still substantial) sentence.

I expect some white-collar sentencing gurus might already have a sense of the guideline range that Manafort will be facing, and I will be interested to see sentencing arguments unfold in many arenas (including perhaps Twitter) in the coming weeks and months.  Of course, I welcome commentors sharing their take on what they think Manafort will get and should get for his crimes.

Prior related posts:

• Appreciating ugly sentencing realities facing Paul Manafort and Rick Gates after federal indictment 
• Paul Manafort has bail revoked ... and has not (yet) gotten rescued from jail by Prez Trump's clemency pen