AboveTheLaw.com editor Elie Mystal walked through the disastrous downfall of former campaign chair Paul Manafort, during an MSNBC panel discussion Sunday.
"He going to jail forever now. Right?" Mystal joked. "Doesn't get to pass go or collect $200."
He noted that oddly, Manafort seems to be taking all of the weight for everything and continues to refuse to assist prosecutors. Manafort had many opportunities to cooperate and do the right thing but continued to refuse, Mystal said. In fact, he outright lied.
"There were so many opportunities for him to flip," he continued. "So much other information that he could have given to the prosecutors that might have reduced his sentence and he repeatedly refused to give that information and then even after he had a plea deal he went out and tried to commit the same crimes again. Clearly, when the prosecutors talk about recidivism, he's clearly -- he has such a criminal mind that there's nothing you can do but cage him at this point. That's going to be his life now."
Manafort has already gotten a long sentence that would prevent him from being released before his death; however, this new addition of charges makes thing even worse for him. It prompted host Kendis Gibson to wonder what Manafort is hiding that is so much more important than losing his life to prison.
Politico correspondent Anita Kumar predicted the unknowns about Manafort "has to be driving the White House crazy."
"Maybe he did continue to lie to Trump," Mystal said after the host recalled each of Manafort's lies. "I don't know. I find it unlikely, but one of the things that Manafort seems to be going for, if he's not spending the rest of his life in prison, the only thing from this memo suggests that he's hoping for a pardon. Somehow the president will get him out of this, even though he's also been convicted of state crimes, which the president can't pardon him from. I don't know if his lawyers have told him that, but it becomes one of these situations where you see this sometimes with career criminals. Like, you can't help them, and you -- it's hard to empathize in their minds. They're no longer acting like a rational person. He obviously is willing to go to jail for a long time or expects randomly somehow to get pardoned away."
Watch the panel below:
