Yep. Ellis put himself in the middle of everything. Asshole.
“How The Manafort
Defense TeamJudge Succeeded In Sowing Doubt With The Jury.”
Fixed.
Can the prosecutors interview the members of the jury or are the names sealed to them as well?
They are given the names before trial.
I can imagine the debates this fall going something like this:
Beto O’Rourke: “Senator Cruz, it’s clear that President Trump is now an unindicted co-conspirator in a felony violation of federal election laws. Why haven’t you or you colleagues done anything about it yet?”
Ted Cruz: “Uhhhhhhh… Ummm… Uhhhhh”
I don’t know. I hear so often about How Brilliant Ted Cruz Is(tm, Josh Marshal), it would certainly blow up in Beto’s face.
Eh – you mostly get the inside word from Josh’s family about what an ass he is going back to law school days.
Well, just replace the names with “Democratic Challenger” and “GOP Incumbent”.
No doubt that Cruz is an ass (and why only rectum-locked leeches like Lee tolerate him), but I still haven’t seen evidence of his brilliance.
Not enough doubt. He’s going to jail and he didn’t walk on anything. Eight is enough the first time. More to come.
It’s clear now that Trump meets all criteria of a Crime Boss, and he chose Judge Kavanaugh to act as a shield for his criminal activities.
No Supreme Court Nominees for presidents named in a criminal conspiracy. It’s time we tested this claim that presidents are beyond the law.
When I’ve served on jury duty, after the trial was over, we freely spoke with attorneys for both sides and the judge.
Yep – this was the judge improperly and erroneously commenting on the bank fraud counts, and then refusing to allow the prosecution to simplify the exhibit organizing process on those counts for the jury. The defense team’s only “success” was having the old fossil as judge.
There’s 11 ostriches, not 8.
FAKE NEWS!!!
That’s okay. This was the best judge the GOP could arrange and Manafort still went down. When they take these 10 charges back to trial it will be an uphill slog for Manafort’s attorneys- assuming he has any left.
- We don’t know how many jurors were for conviction vs. acquittal on those counts.
- The prosecution was at a disadvantage in that they could not respond to the jury’s questions. They will know about them next time and have them clearly answered as part of their case. (For the FBAR violations, the person did NOT have to have over 50% ownership or signing authority to be required to report.)
- The prosecution can learn from the first trial to focus on matching documents with counts.
- Judge Ellis may not be the presiding judge in a retrial, and the prosecution can forestall his commentary and being forced to rush their case.
All of these circumstances mitigate and defense victory lap over their non-performance. They raised doubt on some issues with some jurors. That’s all.
On the FSB loans, the judge seemingly could not understand how the CEO and part owner of the bank could be involved in defrauding the bank. The judge did not get that the rules against bank fraud are there to protect depositors and the FDIC, as well as the bank. That’s why defrauding a bank is a different and more serious crime than defrauding an ordinary corporation. So the judge completely screwed up there.
The judge also made it clear to the jury that he didn’t like or believe Gates, which was not his job.
I guess he felt like Manafort worked for his buddy Reagan, so he was part of the club and didn’t belong in the dock. But Manafort’s still going down. And the judge in Manafort’s next trial may not be so sympathetic to him.
I hope the prosecutors go ahead on a retrial for the remaining 10 counts.
Curious what the jury numbers were on the deadlocked counts. There were a number of troubling ways this case was handled, from Ellis’ irritating nonsense to the fact the jury could freely read the POTUS’ personal musings on the case. I fear sentencing may also be a big letdown, due to the massive deference to white collar leniency.
And in case there’s not enough to be pessimistic about, I wonder if MAGA-driven jury nullification is going to be a big problem as these cases come to conclusion.