Mueller and the plea bargains

In her Sunday commentary, the Review-Journal’s Debra J. Saunders asks, “Is there a person in America who thinks that 80 years is a fitting sentence for a batch of venal but nonviolent crimes by a first-time offender?” She answers her own question by saying there are many who do. She is correct, but they are not called federal prosecutors.

They are actually members of the U.S. Congress. It was Congress that set the maximum sentence by law for the crimes that Paul Manafort was convicted by a jury of committing. Federal prosecutors had nothing to do with it.

I’m not a lawyer, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express once, and I read the Review-Journal enough to know that first-time offenders rarely receive the maximum sentence. Since the judge (not the federal prosecutor) has not sentenced Mr. Manafort yet, nobody knows how many years he will end up serving for his crimes. Who knows? Maybe he will be sentenced to one day of detention, 11 months of GPS monitoring and three months of supervision, just like Imran Awan received.

We will just have to wait and see before we all get our knickers in a twist.