On CNN Wednesday, Andrew Weissman, who served as the lead prosecutor in the Mueller investigation, explained why the pardon of outgoing President Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort doesn't entirely wipe out the judgments against him.
"The Manafort case was your life," said anchor John Berman. "This was your work for years, and now, with one stroke of a pen, is all up in smoke. Your reaction?"
"It is not entirely up in smoke," said Weissman. "It is important to remember that Paul Manafort will still have to spend two years in jail. And we anticipated this, the forfeiture — tens of millions of dollars — was taken criminally and civilly, because we were concerned that if the president were to pardon Paul Manafort, that the criminal forfeiture would be eradicated by pardon; civil forfeiture is not. There still are consequences to Paul Manafort, it is not commensurate with the extensive criminality that he was convicted of and pled guilty to."
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