of violating 18 U.S.C.A. § 1015(a). Implicit in Musleh’s
argument is the contention that the extent of the district court’s depar-
ture was unreasonable because it was in excess of the sentence that
Musleh would have received had he actually been convicted of violat-
ing § 1015(a).

   We find no abuse of discretion in the method by which the district
court determined the extent of departure. As a preliminary matter, we
note that, by analogizing Musleh’s uncharged criminal conduct to per-
jury and referencing the offense level applicable under the perjury
guideline, the district court provided a sufficiently principled explana-
tion for its decision to depart an additional two levels. See Terry, 142
F.3d at 707 (instructing that a sentencing court "must set forth some
form of principled justification for its departure determination.") That
is, the district court did not determine the extent of the departure in
a manner that was wholly untethered from the Guidelines and thus
facially unacceptable. See, e.g., Gary, 18 F.3d at 1131 (reversing
upward departure where it appeared that "the district court simply
decided to double [the defendant]’s base offense level for the sake of
doubling it"); Terry, 142 F.3d at 707 n.6 (rejecting as a method of
departure based on the defendant’s reckless driving the district court’s
                        UNITED STATES v. MUSLEH                          15
decision to increase the offense level by one for each mile the defen-
dant traveled while driving recklessly).

   Nor was the extent of the departure unreasonable. Assuming, with-
out deciding, that Musleh is correct in his contention that U.S.S.G.
§ 2J1.3 would not apply to a violation of 18 U.S.C.A. § 1015(a), he
does not identify the guideline that would govern a hypothetical con-
viction under § 1015(a) and thus fails to offer any theory as to why
a two-level increase in offense level is unreasonable. Indeed, applica-
tion of the other two guidelines that plausibly could govern such a
conviction, U.S.S.G. 