CNN is reporting live on Manafort’s sentencing hearing before Judge Amy Berman Jackson. I admit to a morbid interest in the subject, not so much because of the Trump connection but because of the horrors of his role in Ukraine.

Have a few highlights from Judge Jackson:

Judge Amy Berman Jackson expressed that she was not happy with how Paul Manafort approached the final stretch of this case.

 “Court is one of those places where facts still matter,” Jackson said.

She said Manafort has begun to “minimize his conduct and shield others.”

Jackson admitted she couldn’t tell from an FBI document if Manafort was actually asserting false facts or not.

Jackson believes he’s repeating a lie in his sentencing memo.

Manafort got 47 months.

Mueller had the choice to recommend Manafort’s DC sentence be served consecutively or concurrently and decided to wait and see what Ellis did first. Glad they still have that card to play because justice was not served tonight.

— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) March 8, 2019

They sure have two different kinds of justice in this country.

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) March 8, 2019

Manafort’s 47-month sentence in ED Va is outrageously lenient. Judge Ellis has inexcusably perverted justice and the guidelines. His pretrial comments were a dead giveaway. The DC sentence next week had better be consecutive.

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) March 8, 2019

Judge Ellis’s assessment that Manafort led an “otherwise blameless life” was proof

Virginia Heffernan reminds us:

Just to keep eyes on the ball: Manafort's crimes are not only financial & obstruction.

The *underlying* crime is his profound complicity in the mass murder of civilians under Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine.

— Virginia Heffernan (@page88) June 15, 2018

The *underlying* crime is his profound complicity in the mass murder of civilians under Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine.

So let’s refresh our memories on that, with help from Luke Harding at the Guardian in April:

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort authorised a secret media operation on behalf of Ukraine’s former president featuring “black ops”, “placed” articles in the Wall Street Journal and US websites and anonymous briefings against Hillary Clinton.

The project was

Read the charges, the Times invites us. Ok.

Page one. For at least nine years Manafort and Gates acted as unregistered agents for Ukraine and Yanukovich. They made tens of millions doing this. They laundered the money in order to hide it from the Feds.

Page two. They were required by law to report their foreign lobbying to the Feds. They didn’t. They concealed it instead. When the DoJ asked them about it in 2016 they lied.

Manafort spent the laundered money on all the expensive things. He paid no taxes on it. He defrauded banks that loaned him money.

Page 4. Manafort worked for the pro-Russia party in Ukraine. In 2010 that party’s candidate, Yanukovich, was elected President … Read the rest