Trump's ex-campaign manager Manafort doesn't deserve leniency: Counsel

US Special Counsel Robert Mueller in a court filing has said Donand Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort does not deserve leniency.

According to a court filing released on Saturday, Mueller said, "Nothing about Manafort's upbringing, schooling, legal education, or family and financial circumstances mitigates his criminality".

"For over a decade, Manafort repeatedly and brazenly violated the law, his crimes continued up through the time he was first indicted in October 2017 and remarkably went unabated even after indictment," Xinhua reported on Sunday citing the document.

"Manafort engaged in witness tampering while on bail and, even after he was caught for engaging in that, Manafort committed the additional crimes of perjury and making false statements after making his guilty pleas herein," it says.

Manafort joined Trump's campaign team in March 2016 and spent three months as Trump's campaign chairman until mid-August. He was convicted in a Virginian federal court trial on charges of tax and bank fraud last year and pleaded guilty in Washington on others.

The charges largely stem from his working for a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine years before the 2016 US elections. They do not directly address any alleged collusion between Trump associates or officials and the Russian government, which the Mueller team has been investigating since May 2017.

Trump has repeatedly attacked the Mueller probe as a "rigged witch hunt".

Manafort was scheduled to be sentenced in Washington on March 13. The US media said he was also awaiting a sentencing date in Virginia.

--IANS

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