Discussion: Jury In Manafort Trial Will Wrap Up For The Day At 5PM ET

I had hoped for a verdict today, but I did say a few days ago that given the sprawling nature of this case, that Friday would be the earliest and it would likely trail into next week. Still, with Trump shooting off at the mouth and the jury not sequestered, one wonders how that plays in the jury room. Imho, it likely won’t matter and actually might hurt Manafort, because he won’t be a regular dude, but a connected one who is cheating the system and got caught. Manafort and Trump are both looking for the MAGA juror.

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So does this mean they’re effectively hung? It’s day 3 and they still can’t reach a consensus?

I doubt a weekend of the president and his propaganda network carping about how poor Paulie is being victimized by a Deep State conspiracy will provide any clarity.

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It’s only day 2. I don’t think that is unusual in a case this sprawling.

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Would like to think that this jury is keenly aware of the gravity of this case and their need to get it right, so this doesn’t surprise me.

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Some Russian promising a juror $20 million deposited in a Cypriot bank account might alter the course of deliberations.

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Jury trolling more. Next note: Can they speak to Rick Astley?

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This is a very complicated case with lots of documents. Juries tend to like to look at the documents, particularly when the judge did not let them see them in full in real time. From a few similarly complicated cases I saw when working as a law clerk in Federal Court, I thought that several days of deliberations would not be unusual. I worked on one white collar case that had thousands of pages of documents that took 6 days of deliberations before they found the defendant guilty on all counts.

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There’s 17 separate charges. Even if they think he’s guilty as sin, they’re still going to walk through the elements of every single charge, one by one and make certain everything is there. This is not a long deliberation in the slightest for this type of case.

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They aren’t supposed to seek or receive any outside info, are they? No TV, web, email, phone, in person conversations–nothing.

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That – or an offer of Novichok – is what worries me the most about the jury.

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They have 18 charges to go through and, unless they’re all complete idiots, they know that each of their verdicts will be heavily scrutinized by millions of people. They’re taking their time to make sure they haven’t missed anything and to show that they took all of this very seriously, that’s all.

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It’s either that or Angry Birds.

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I wonder what the one juror’s event is. Hopefully something distracting, like a concert. I would think it would be hard to look interested at some family gathering with trial evidence going around and around in your head.

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Golf at Bedminster.

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Oh Lord another weekend of political withdrawal.

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I certainly hope Trump’s inevitable weekend tweets don’t give Manafort the basis for appeal

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They will be cautioned to that effect before they leave. Only way you learn whether they violated that is if they admit it and someone rats them out.

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The jury has a lot of documentation to go through to understand the prosecution’s case, and they need to talk through how the defense tried to tear the prosecution’s case down. And, they need to do it for each of the 18 counts, and the prosecution gave them a lot of documentation to work through. I’m sure that the jury knows their result will be picked over, and attacked by conservatives if Manafort loses…death threats are not that unlikely either. So, they are going to get it nailed down as much as they can and make sure they agree on the result.

There’s no news yet about a juror attempting to hold things up, none of the notes have shown conflicts, so it’s probably just them working through things. If there isn’t a verdict in a week, or if notes start coming out that indicate problems, then start to worry. I don’t see how a jury doesn’t convict Manafort on at least some of the charges though, but we’ll know the answer soon.

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Not in the evening. That’s Cheeseburger Executive Time.

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