CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — For maybe the last time, Alex Murdaugh, in a prison jumpsuit instead of the suit he used to wear, shuffled into a courtroom Monday in South Carolina and was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison.
Murdaugh was punished — this time in federal court — for stealing from clients and his law firm. The 55-year-old disbarred attorney is already serving a life sentence without parole in a state prison for killing his wife and son.
Federal agents had recommended a sentence from 17 1/2 to just under 22 years.
Murdaugh also pleaded guilty in state court to financial crimes and was ordered to spend 27 years in prison. The federal sentence will run at the same time as his state prison term and he likely will have to serve all 40 years if his murder convictions are overturned on appeal.
U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel said he sentenced Murdaugh to a harsher punishment than suggested because he stole from “the most needy, vulnerable people,” including a client who became a quadriplegic after a crash, a state trooper who was injured on the job, and a trust fund intended for children whose parents were killed in a wreck.
Murdaugh stole from people who “placed all their problems and all their hopes" on him, Gergel said.
The 22 federal counts are the final charges outstanding for Murdaugh, who three years ago was an established lawyer negotiating multimillion-dollar settlements in tiny Hampton County, where members of his family served as elected prosecutors and ran the area's premier law firm for nearly a century.
Murdaugh will also have to pay nearly $9 million in restitution.
“There is a staggering human toll to every cent,” said attorney Justin Bamberg, who represented several of Murdaugh's victims.
Prosecutors asked the judge to give Murdaugh a harsher sentence because FBI agents think he is not telling the whole truth about what happened to $6 million he stole and whether a so-far unnamed attorney helped his criminal schemes.
Murdaugh's largest scheme involved the sons of his longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield. She died in a fall at the family home. Murdaugh promised to take care of Satterfield's family, then worked with a lawyer friend who pleaded guilty on a scheme to steal $4 million in a wrongful death settlement with the family's insurer.
In all, Murdaugh took settlement money from or inflated fees or expenses for more than two dozen clients. Prosecutors said the FBI found 11 more victims than the state investigation found and that Murdaugh stole nearly $1.3 million from them.
Murdaugh again apologized to his victims at his sentencing Monday, saying he felt “guilt, sorrow, shame, embarrassment, humiliation.” He offered to meet with victims so they can say what they want to say and “more closely inspect my sincerity.”
“There’s not enough time and I don’t possess a sufficient vocabulary to adequately portray to you in words the magnitude of how I feel about the things I did,” Murdaugh said.
Murdaugh blamed nearly two decades of addiction to opioids and said he was proud he has been clean for 937 days.
Gergel scoffed at this explanation.
“No truly impaired person could pull off these complex transactions," the judge said of the maze of fake accounts, juggled checks and money movements that hid the thefts for nearly 20 years.
Prosecutor Emily Limehouse said Murdaugh's claims don't make sense because he told the FBI he was taking the same amount of pills as he did when his addiction started in 2008, but the amount of money he stole increased rapidly in the years before his arrest.
“He was adamant all of the money was spent on drugs. It doesn't add up,” Limehouse said.
Murdaugh was convicted a year ago of killing his younger son Paul with a shotgun and his wife, Maggie, with a rifle. While he has pleaded guilty to dozens of financial crimes, he adamantly denies he killed them and testified in his own defense. There will be years of appeals in the murder cases.
The case has captivated true crime fans, spawning dozens of podcast episodes and thousands of social media posts.
Prosecutors want to keep many of the FBI statements secret, saying they are still investigating the missing money and who might have helped Murdaugh to steal it. They say making the information public would jeopardize an ongoing grand jury investigation.
The defense asked for a lighter sentence, comparing Murdaugh's possible sentence to 25 years for crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried or Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes' 11 years for duping investors, saying they stole billions while Murdaugh's thefts were in millions.
But lawyer Eric Bland, who represented the family of Murdaugh's housekeeper, said there was a big difference.
“Those victims were investing money,” he said, standing with one of Satterfield's sons. "They lost loved ones."
Attorney Jim Griffin speaks after his client Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison for financial crimes on Monday, April 1, 2024, in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
U.S. Attorney for South Carolina Adair Ford Boroughs speaks after Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison for financial crimes on Monday, April 1, 2024, in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins)
Alex Murdaugh, convicted of killing his wife, Maggie, and younger son, Paul, in June 2021, stands with his defense team during a hearing on a motion for a retrial, Jan. 16, 2024, at the Richland County Judicial Center in Columbia, S.C. Murdaugh is scheduled to be sentenced Monday, April 1, 2024 on financial crime charges. It's likely the last time he will face a judge for punishment. (Tracy Glantz/The State via AP, Pool)
Alex Murdaugh cries as he addresses the court during his sentencing for stealing from 18 clients, Nov. 28, 2023, at the Beaufort County Courthouse in Beaufort, S.C. Murdaugh is scheduled to be sentenced Monday, April 1, 2024 on financial crime charges. It's likely the last time he will face a judge for punishment. (Andrew J. Whitaker/The Post And Courier via AP, Pool, file)
NEW YORK (AP) — Prosecutors in the hush money trial of former President Donald Trump have called porn actor Stormy Daniels to the witness stand.
Daniels has alleged that she had a sexual encounter with Trump a decade before the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied it.
Trump stared straight forward as Daniels entered the room, turning his head slightly in her direction as she approached the witness stand.
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger led off by asking Daniels about her upbringing in Louisiana. Daniels talked about having grown up poor and wanting to become a veterinarian.
In the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign, his then-lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about what she says was an awkward and unexpected sexual encounter with Trump at a celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe in July 2006.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump returned to his hush money trial Tuesday facing a threat of jail time for additional gag order violations as prosecutors geared up to summon big-name witnesses including porn actor Stormy Daniels.
An attorney for Daniels, Clark Brewster, told The Associated Press that the actor, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is “likely” to be called as a witness Tuesday. Earlier in the day, Trump said in a Truth Social post that he had been “recently told” who the witness would be and complained that he should have been given more notice. He later deleted the post.
In the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign, his then-lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about what she says was an awkward and unexpected sexual encounter with Trump at a celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe in July 2006. Trump denies having sex with Daniels.
Daniels' testimony, even if sanitized for a courtroom setting and stripped of tell-all details, is by far the most-awaited spectacle in a trial that has toggled between tabloidesque elements and dry record-keeping details. Her turn on the witness stand will represent a remarkable moment legally and politically. Courtroom testimony from an adult film performer about an intimate encounter she says she had with a former American president adds to the long line of historic firsts in this case.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers quibbled at the start of the day over the contours of her testimony.
A Trump attorney, Susan Necheles, asked that Daniels be barred from testifying about “the details” of the alleged sexual encounter. Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger said such details were relevant to her credibility but also offered reassurances that they would be “really basic.” Judge Juan M. Merchan agreed to permit limited testimony.
Testimony has made clear that at the time of the payment to Daniels, Trump and his campaign were reeling from the Oct. 7, 2016, publication of the never-before-seen 2005 “Access Hollywood” footage in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitals without their permission.
The candidate spoke with Cohen and Hope Hicks, his campaign’s press secretary, by phone the next day as they sought to limit damage from the tape and keep his alleged affairs out of the press, according to testimony.
Cohen paid Daniels after her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, indicated she was willing to make on-the-record statements to the National Enquirer or on television confirming a sexual encounter with Trump. National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard alerted publisher David Pecker and then, at Pecker’s direction, told Cohen that Daniels was agitating to go public with her claims, prosecutors said. Daniels had previously sought to sell her story to another celebrity gossip magazine, Life & Style, in 2011.
Pecker testified earlier in the trial that he balked at having the Enquirer pay a “catch and kill” fee for Daniels that Cohen later made.
The first witness Tuesday was Sally Franklin, an executive at Penguin Random House, which published several of Trump’s books through one of the company's imprints.
Prosecutor Becky Mangold had Franklin read excerpts from the 2004 volume “Trump: How to Get Rich” that illuminated Trump’s approach to business. The readings appeared to be designed to show that Trump was hands-on at his company and willing to retaliate against those he perceives have done him wrong.
Among the excerpts: “If you don’t know every aspect of what you’re doing, down to the paper clips, you’re setting yourself up for some unwanted surprises,” and “For many years, I’ve said that if someone screws you, screw them back.”
The jury on Monday heard from two witnesses, including a former Trump Organization controller, who provided a mechanical but vital recitation of how the company reimbursed payments that were allegedly meant to suppress embarrassing stories from surfacing and then logged them as legal expenses in a manner that Manhattan prosecutors say broke the law.
The testimony from Jeffrey McConney yielded an important building block for prosecutors trying to pull back the curtain on what they say was a corporate records cover-up of transactions designed to protect Trump’s Republican presidential bid during a pivotal stretch of the race. It focused on a $130,000 payment from Cohen to Daniels and the subsequent reimbursement Cohen received.
McConney and another witness testified that the reimbursement checks were drawn from Trump’s personal account. Yet even as jurors witnessed the checks and other documentary evidence, prosecutors did not elicit testimony Monday showing that Trump dictated that the payments would be logged as legal expenses, a designation that prosecutors contend was intentionally deceptive.
McConney acknowledged during cross-examination that Trump never asked him to log the reimbursements as legal expenses or discussed the matter with him at all. Another witness, Deborah Tarasoff, a Trump Organization accounts payable supervisor, said under questioning that she did not get permission to cut the checks in question from Trump himself.
“You never had any reason to believe that President Trump was hiding anything or anything like that?” Trump attorney Todd Blanche asked.
”Correct,” Tarasoff replied.
The testimony followed a stern warning from Merchan that additional violations of a gag order barring Trump from inflammatory out-of-court comments about witnesses, jurors and others closely connected to the case could result in jail time.
The $1,000 fine imposed Monday marks the second time since the trial began last month that Trump has been sanctioned for violating the gag order. He was fined $9,000 last week, $1,000 for each of nine violations.
“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent. Therefore going forward, this court will have to consider a jail sanction,” Merchan said before jurors were brought into the courtroom.
Trump sat forward in his seat, glowering at the judge as he handed down the ruling. When the judge finished speaking, Trump shook his head twice and crossed his arms.
Yet even as Merchan warned of jail time in his most pointed and direct admonition, he also made clear his reservations about a step that he described as a “last resort.”
“The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,” Merchan said. “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me. To take that step would be disruptive to these proceedings.”
The latest violation stems from an April 22 interview with television channel Real America’s Voice in which Trump criticized the speed at which the jury was picked and claimed, without evidence, that it was stacked with Democrats.
Prosecutors are continuing to build toward their star witness, Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money payments. He is expected to undergo a bruising cross-examination from defense attorneys seeking to undermine his credibility with jurors.
Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payments but has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. The trial is the first of his four criminal cases to reach a jury.
Tucker reported from Washington.
FILE - Stormy Daniels arrives at an event in Berlin, on Oct. 11, 2018. Witness testimony in Donald Trump's hush money trial is set to move forward again and all eyes are on who will be called next. An attorney for Stormy Daniels says the porn actor is expected to appear as a witness on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
Former President Donald Trump attends his trial at the Manhattan Criminal court, Monday, May 6, 2024, in New York. (Win McNamee/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump attends his trial at the Manhattan Criminal court, Monday, May 6, 2024, in New York. (Win McNamee/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before departing Manhattan criminal court, Monday, May 6, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson, Pool)
