This sounds like real on-the-spot reporting. No fireworks this time, but keeping on top of the details adds up. Great work!
Manafort is a flight risk.
His willingness to parse the language of a judge’s gag-order shows he will happliy do so regarding his bail allowances.
I say revoke house arrest allowance.
Signing up to coach his kid’s sports team while under house arrest? Really? Shows a lot of respect for the court, doesn’t it? Not exactly the way to start off your defense. Manafort is a hard case; Gates appears to be an idiot. Either that, or he’s got an idiot for a lawyer.
Smart judge. If she punished him, it would be all over the GOP propaganda network that she’s biased. “Don’t do it again” should suffice for a first offense and it avoids the insane and obviously coordinated pile-on from Faux News, Breitbart, et al., in their quest to de-legitimize everything about the Mueller investigation.
Gates, she said, it appeared to her, was trying to turn his home confinement into a “home confinement unless I want to be elsewhere.”
The judge should be happy Gates isn't asking to vary from confinement to golf with Trump. He'd never be home.He’s a connected Caucasian man with money. Did you notice the judge decided to disallow his coaching duties as an excuse to leave home? Yeah, neither did I.
It’s well past time to stop living in fear of how right wing nutjobs will spin the actions of people they hate. They have an agenda and will spin anything and constantly change the goal posts to fit it. If you’re utterly unapproachable they will still generate fake outrage from thin air. You can’t let crazy people dictate what is and is not allowable. We’ve seen where that’s gotten us.
Who said anything about fear? Choosing your battles isn’t fear. It’s strategery.
And you can howl about it all you want, but reality dictates decisions making unless you’re a fool. Reality is this: their propaganda machine WINS battles for them. Ours does not.
Their propaganda machine doesn’t even use reality. That is an even better reason to stand in defense of reality and facts. Part of that is not being kowtowed in advance.
it’s been my experience that judge’s will let almost anything pass the first time, regardless of how bad the excuse is. The second time, almost nothing goes unless there’s a really good reason with strong documentation.
It makes it much easier on them and takes the guesswork out of it.
She spent more than a decade at a top white-collar criminal-defense law firm. To say she has seen it all would be an exaggeration, yes, but not by a whole lot.
“I’ve had it with you, Mr. Manafort,” U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson said.
“Don’t make me take these off,” she warned.
This is the way a truly impartial judge acts. Kudos to Judge Jackson for finding the middle ground and acting in an impartial manner. Now, watch what happens if Manafort the Stupid tries this trick again; I doubt she will be quite so forgiving.
Yeah, well, don’t be betting your house on it.
My skills at prediction are strictly limited, stevie. I’m simply pointing out that she’s acting like an impartial judge of the facts, not like a Republican.
I know. But I tend to believe members of the white power structure are given every break in the book and then some. Goddamned Bob McDonnell and his wife took bribes until their pockets couldn’t hold any more of them and were let off the hook. They probably could have murdered Jonnie Williams and drew community service.
It’s difficult for Manafort “to sit and watch his reputation” be “besmirched in the press,” Downing said, adding that he would like to get more advice from her on how to manage the negative media attention.
I give the judge good marks for patience because JFC this is not how you explain why you violated a gag order. The first rule of Gag Order Club is do not talk about Gag Order Club or anything else.
I think the judge forgot to say “Simon says”, so it didn’t count.