2020 elections

No other presidential candidate came out as quickly — or as forcefully — on the Rep. Ilhan Omar controversy as the Vermont senator.

When the latest controversy erupted over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s comments about Israel, only one 2020 presidential candidate rushed to her defense: Bernie Sanders.

The Vermont senator, the only Jewish candidate in the Democratic primary, embraced the African-American, Muslim congresswoman and called out House Democrats for “stifling” debate about Israel while also warning against equating “anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of the right-wing, Netanyahu government in Israel.”

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No other presidential contender came out as quickly — or as forcefully — as Sanders, who laid down a clear line in the crowded Democratic field between those running as true progressives on foreign policy and those who support an existing U.S. policy that tends to favor Israel over Palestine.

Sanders’ reaction to Omar’s comments — in which said Israel’s allies “push for allegiance to a foreign country” — served other purposes as well: it helped solidify his hold on the party’s left wing and dovetailed with his intensified outreach to older African-American voters, a critical constituency that failed to warm to him in 2016.

“Bernie Sanders has held the most progressive positions in the Democratic Party on foreign policy and U.S. policy toward Israel — and just like with so many other issues, the party is catching up to positions he’s held for years now,” said Waleed Shahid, a former Sanders campaign aide who currently works for the progressive Justice Democrats. “It’s noteworthy that Sanders had both the first statement and the most aggressive one in calling out Netanyahu’s government specifically and mentioning the Palestinians by name.”

Sanders’ rivals, however, sized up the potential political risk and shied away from taking such a left-wing position. Their responses reflected their belief Omar’s remarks stand to create a wedge between two demographic groups crucial to the party base, Jewish and African-American voters, and open a divide along racial and religious lines amid a sensitive debate over anti-Semitism, anti-black prejudice and Islamophobia.

A House resolution that was initially proposed to denounce Omar by name was changed to condemn anti-Semitism, bigotry against Muslims and denounce racism against minorities, and passed overwhelmingly Thursday. Omar’s name was not mentioned in the final resolution.

The presidential candidates vying for the progressive vote — California’s Kamala Harris and Massachusetts’s Elizabeth Warren — followed Sanders’ lead Wednesday and expressed solidarity with Omar. More moderate senators with unquestioned pro-Israel bonafides held their tongues until Thursday before issuing statements that made sure to fault Omar as well as her critics.

“Those with critical views of Israel, such as Congresswoman Omar, should be able to express their views without employing anti-Semitic tropes about money or influence,” said New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, “just as those critical of Congresswoman Omar should not be using Islamophobic language and imagery that incites violence, such as what we saw in West Virginia.”

Gillibrand, like most other Democrats, faulted Republicans in Congress for waiting decades to denounce Iowa Rep. Steve King for his racist remarks, for President Trump’s numerous inflammatory comments about immigrants and his failure to denounce white nationalists after the 2017 Charlottesville riots.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who avoided news media questions until a CNN reporter caught him in the halls of Congress, cautioned that “we can’t be selective” in denouncing bigotry.

“I found what she said was disturbing, and I stand against anti-Semitism and racism and bigotry,” he said. “You also see bigotry and anti-Islamic sentiment being wrapped around her criticism.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota — a staunch Israel supporter — waited until Thursday night, after the House resolution vote, to issue a brief statement condemning anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment. She likely won’t be able to avoid a more fulsome response for long. On Sunday, her staff plans a press conference concerning climate change in Tampa, where she’s likely to be asked about the Omar controversy.

Florida plays an outsized role in the discussion about Israel: After California and New York, Florida has the largest number of Jewish residents.

In 2016, the issue of Palestine and Israel collided in the races for Florida’s Democratic Party chair as well as the Democratic National Committee Chair. In the 2018 race for governor, Democrat Andrew Gillum was savaged by Republican opponent Ron DeSantis for his support of a black-led leftist youth group, Dream Defenders, which opposes Israel’s ‘occupation‘ of Palestine. Gillum narrowly lost to DeSantis and precinct data show Gillum underperformed in precincts in heavily Jewish areas.

“I see this as a wedge that can grow larger,” said Mike Moskowitz, a major pro-Israel Democratic donor from Florida. An opponent of Sanders, Moskowitz said the controversy over Omar’s comments “allows Donald Trump to criticize us” and “plays into the hands of Bernie, who has always espoused these views.”

“This is not the debate we want to be having,” Moskowitz said. “This is not what the presidential candidates want to talk about, except maybe for Bernie.”

Moskowitz said he still believes Sanders’ views are not in the mainstream in the party and that the rift — which has appeared to widen in recent years and has increasingly worried many Democrats — is a serious threat to Democratic unity.

The issue will be front and center, he said, at the party’s nominating convention when it decides the platform plank concerning Israel and Palestine — it already caused a brief stir in 2012.

Sanders’ comments come as his campaign has signaled that foreign policy will be a larger focus of his 2020 campaign, after critics knocked him as a lightweight on international affairs four years earlier.

Activists are noticing, in the wake of his Omar remarks.

“It is significant that Senator Sanders mentioned Netanyahu by name and referenced Palestinians in his statement. Senator Warren also referenced them in her statement. Senators Harris and Gillibrand did not,” said Yonah Lieberman, founding member of IfNotNow, a movement of young American Jews urging the end of Israel’s ‘occupation‘ of Palestine.

Many on the left, however, believe that the party base is more dovish and pro-Palestinian than the Democratic establishment thinks.

“There’s a generational divide, and a younger, more diverse and more progressive Democratic Party is linking the fight for inclusivity at home with taking on Netanyahu’s Trump-like rhetoric and policies abroad,” said Shaheed.

For Zaina Alsous, an organizer with the Dream Defenders group, the attacks on Omar have been unfair and have ignored her growing stature as a “new progressive leader” and champion of human rights throughout the Middle East. She credited Sanders for his stance on the issue.

“There will be a very severe wedge in the party,” Alsous warned, if Democratic candidates and voters don’t begin reorienting their views to support more human rights in Palestine.

Rodney Davis actually kept talking about his love of Nickelback for another 40 seconds or so when it was his turn to speak again. pic.twitter.com/PQQERt9d6S

— Adam Smith (@asmith83) March 7, 2019

Legal

The sentence is the longest to date for a Trump associate ensnared in the special counsel’s investigation, but much shorter than expected.

Paul Manafort, the one-time 2016 Trump campaign chairman and longtime Republican lobbyist, has been sentenced to 47 months in prison for a variety of financial fraud crimes, a much lighter sentence than many had anticipated.

Manafort’s sentence, handed down Thursday by U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria, Va., is the longest to date for a Trump associate ensnared in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. But the nine months Manafort has already spent in confinement will count toward his 47-month sentence.

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Manafort — wearing a green jail uniform and relying on a wheelchair and cane during the hearing — asked for “compassion” from the judge before receiving his punishment.

“The last two years have been the most difficult my family and I have experienced,” he said, seated behind a table and speaking softly. “To say I feel humiliated and ashamed would be a gross understatement.”

Notably, however, Manafort did not apologize, an omission that Ellis pounced on, chastising Manafort for his criminal behavior, which spanned his years as a prominent consultants both in D.C. and abroad who earned a reputation for extravagant spending habits and a luxurious lifestyle.

“I was surprised that I did not hear you express regret for engaging in wrongful conduct,” he said. “I hope you will reflect on that and your regret will be that you didn’t comply with the law.”

And, he noted, “you’ll have that opportunity,” adding, “life is making choices and living with the choices you make.”

But Ellis also signaled that he wasn’t going to send Manafort away for what might have amounted to a life sentence for the 69-year-old, as many had expected. Ellis stressed that he found the sentencing guidelines in the case — which called for between roughly 20 and 24 years — “excessive,” and said he though Manafort had “lived an otherwise blameless life.”

Ellis also emphasized that Manafort’s convictions were not linked to any potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian agents, a subject of intense interest at the heart of Mueller’s probe.

Before announcing the sentence, Ellis explained that Manafort would not receive credit for agreeing to cooperate with Mueller as part of a plea deal in a separate case in Washington, D.C. That deal was ultimately ripped up after Mueller’s team accused the former adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush of repeatedly lying to investigators.

Manafort’s attorneys have said that any misstatements were merely a result of their client’s poor memory. They noted on Thursday that Manafort had met with the special counsel’s office for 50 hours as part of his cooperation agreement. Prosecutor Greg Andres rebutted that the sessions yielded no information relevant to the Virginia case.

“It certainly wasn’t 50 hours of information we thought was useful,” Andres said, noting that the information Manafort provided was already in investigators’ hands.

Thursday’s nearly four-year sentence could grow even longer next Wednesday, when another federal judge will determine whether Manafort should serve additional time for the crimes he pleaded guilty to in his D.C. case: acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Ukraine, money laundering and witness tampering.

Ellis’s sentence marks the latest turn for Manafort, the longtime GOP operative convicted last August by a Northern Virginia jury on eight felony counts, including filing false tax returns, failure to register foreign bank accounts and bank fraud. Jurors deadlocked on 10 other counts, and Mueller eventually agreed to not retry those charges as part of the plea bargain stuck with prosecutors.

As part of his punishment handed down Thursday, Manafort was ordered to pay $25 million in restitution, including $6 million in unpaid taxes.

In court filings, Mueller’s office portrayed Manafort as a hardened criminal who brazenly broke the law multiple times over several decades, including after his indictment when he tampered with witnesses and after his plea deal when he lied to federal prosecutors and a grand jury.

In their rebuttals, Manafort’s defense attorneys repeatedly pointed to Ellis’s public comments that none of Manafort’s crimes appeared unrelated to Russian interference in the 2016 election. Prosecutors countered that some of the bank fraud charges involved claims he traded on his influence in Trump circles to fraudulently obtain bank loans.

Still, the bulk of the charges stem from Manafort’s work as a political consultant in Ukraine prior to Trump’s presidential run. They center around accusations that the operative stashed away tens of millions of dollars in offshore bank accounts while cheating the IRS and defrauding three banks to get loans worth more than $25 million.

“His deceit, which is a fundamental component of the crimes of conviction and relevant conduct, extended to tax preparers, bookkeepers, banks, the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice National Security Division, the FBI, the Special Counsel’s Office, the grand jury, his own legal counsel, Members of Congress, and members of the executive branch of the United States government,” prosecutors argued last month in one of their sentencing memos.

“In sum, upon release from jail,” the Mueller team added, “Manafort presents a grave risk of recidivism.”

Manafort’s lawyers had pleaded for leniency by noting Mueller’s case has broken their client “personally, professional and financially. Manafort has been jailed since last June after being accused of pressuring witnesses.

Trump could still step in and save his former aide. On Twitter, the president said he felt “very badly” for Manafort after his verdict came down last August. Trump later confirmed his willingness to consider a pardon.

However, a Trump pardon could have limited impact. Manafort’s admissions to tax and bank fraud offenses could ease his prosecution in state courts for similar crimes, although some states like New York have protections against state retrials for identical offenses.

In addition, Manafort has already forfeited tens of millions of dollars in property that legal experts say Trump likely can’t return to his ex-campaign chair.

Manafort faced a maximum possible sentence of 80 years in prison for the crimes he was convicted of in Virginia last August. Mueller’s team endorsed sentencing guidelines that called for Manafort to receive between about 20 and 24 years in prison. But while prosecutors called for a serious sentence, they did not explicitly urge Ellis to give Manafort a sentence in that range.

Defense attorneys said the guidelines were “clearly disproportionate” to Manafort’s conduct. They, too, didn’t make any explicit recommendations but urged Ellis to impose a sentence “substantially below” the guidelines.

Manafort’s first sentence has already easily eclipsed anyone else netted so far in the Mueller probe. Previously, the most severe penalty was a three-year sentence given to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to a series of charges involving false statements, tax fraud and campaign finance violations — some that federal prosecutors brought in New York. He will report to prison in May.

Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and Rick Gates, a one-time Trump campaign deputy and Manafort business associate, are still cooperating with federal prosecutors and do not have sentencing dates scheduled.

In the Washington case, Manafort faces a maximum possible sentence of 10 years in prison. Prosecutors haven’t recommended a specific sentence there, but have said they might urge the judge to tack on whatever prison time she imposes to the end of Ellis’s sentence rather than letting Manafort serve both sentences concurrently.