Paul Manafort just gave Donald Trump a taste of his own very dark future

| 3:30 pm EDT June 27, 2019
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Paul Manafort, who is already serving a federal prison sentence which will effectively keep him behind bars for the rest of his natural life, was hauled into a courthouse in New York City to begin answering for the state level criminal charges against him. When the cameras caught a glimpse of him on his way into the courthouse, Manafort looked disheveled and defeated. If Donald Trump was watching, he got a taste of his own very dark and hopeless future.

Donald Trump has still made no attempt at pardoning Paul Manafort on federal charges, and there’s no real indication that he ever will. But either way, Manafort is facing several years in prison on state level charges, and Trump can’t pardon Manafort on that. Nor can any future president – and that’s the whole point. State charges can’t just magically go away.

For now, Trump is shielded from prosecution by the fact that he’s still illegitimately occupying the office of President of the United States. But that’ll change soon enough (though not soon enough), and that’s when Trump will get hit with federal and state criminal charges across the board. Even if he manages to pardon himself on his way out the door on the federal charges, he’s going to rot on the state charges. He’ll go almost directly from the White House to Rikers Island, where he’ll have to try to convince a judge that he should be let out on bail because he’s somehow not a flight risk to Russia. Good luck with that one.

Paul Manafort is a career criminal whose life is over as a direct result of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Donald Trump is also a career criminal whose life is also over as a result of his 2016 campaign – it just hasn’t become official yet. Trump should take a long hard look at the defeated and broken Manafort heading into that courtroom, because unless Trump cuts a resignation plea deal in exchange for a shorter prison sentence, his fate will end up being the same as Manafort.