Paul “Call me The Scorpion” Manafort
Still working for that pardon. He’ll probably get one, too.
I didn’t mean to lie. It’s just a force of habit. Lying is a part of my job. It’s who i am. It’s what i do.
Oh, for gods sakes, Paulie. Take your lumps and go away. Not so smirky now, are you? Pay attention, Trump, your day is coming.
Sorry, but i have to ask:
WaPo this morning has the splash on …the Grand Havana Room Cigar Club…you mean the one that is at 666 E 5th Av…Jared’s hot little money pit?
Why would WaPo not associate that factoid in their big rundown on the meeting there involving Manafort, Gates, Russians and a whole lot more…but no mention that this is the very same building Kushco just got refinanced through them oil Arab types…? Just asking. Thanks.
No way, No how. Trump cares only about HIMSELF. His is a raging uncontrolled narcissist. A pardon for Pauli would (a) cause a lot of republicans to break from him out of self preservation, (b) would cause his impeachment, and (c) my guess he has been told would cause enough republicans to break from his so that he is convicted of obstruction of justice by the Senate.
The republicans know that if Trump starts pardoning people, it will cost them 10 senate seats, 30 more in the house, and might destroy the party moving forward. They are tellling Trump every time they can that pardoning people will be the end of him.
And Trump is a coward, he does not want to face the blowback showing him to be the loser he is. Want an e.g.? Look at the pressure the Republicans are putting on him to sign the border agreement. And how are they getting him to sign? They told him that 20 republicans would vote to re-open the government, and then they would override his veto. The same thing (x10) is the message they are sending about pardons.
Two of the similes attorneys suggested Paul Manafort NOT use in his defense:
• It was “unwitting,” like Qatar bailing out Jared “Full Metal Jackass” Kushner’s white elephant 666 Fifth Avenue.
• It was an “accident,” like the Sawdis’ murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
This is boring. But it is also repulsive.
Manafort wishes to use the Rights and Privileges (that people have died for) of a representative Republic in order to evade punishment for his efforts in trying to destroy that Republic.
I do not have words I am permitted to use on this site to express my feelings on this.
Rich white criminals. Maybe he won’t get a pass, but I wouldn’t wager on it with the deed to my house. “We’ll see what happens; it’ll be in two to three weeks. It’ll be beautiful.”
Since I lie all the time and do it for a living sometimes I just can’t help myself, in fact I’v been known to tell a lie even when the truth would serve me better.
Manafort
I am reminded of the old Steve Martin bit about how you defend against not filing your taxes: “I forgot!”
Please proceed. This sounds pretty darned good to me.
Yes, but we get Pence. I think the slow burning down of the republican party is a bigger long term gift. As long as the D’s don’t go to far hard left, they will represent 65% of the country by the time Trump is dragged out of the white house by the secret service.
“Manafort Insists He Did Not Purposefully Lie To Mueller’s Team.”
He also did not lie repeatedly, unreservedly, criminally, and badly.
The two most relevant sections here are III, Interactions with Mr. Kilimnick and IV, Other DOJ Investigation.
Unlike the NYT, Manafort’s attorneys did not miss that that the Judge broke down the Interactions with Kilimnick into two categories: 1. Ukraine Stuff and 2. __________ [redacted] stuff. The NYT did their partial CYA piece on the former, not the latter. While both are important, the [redacted] stuff is the most explosive. The [redacted] stuff is the key part of the conspiracy b/c this is about Manafort sharing polling data with a GRU agent while he was the Trump campaign manager.
On the Ukraine stuff, Manafort’s attorneys state that his omissions were not intentional. “Even if the defendant was initially incorrect about how many times issue [Ukraine Peace Plan] was raised, a fair reading of the record demonstrates that Mr. Manafort was attempting to recall the discussions as best as he could and was not intentionally misleading the interrogators about the matter.”
The Manafort spin is that he discussed the Ukraine peace plan after Kilimnick insisted for a period of 15 minutes in the Cigar Room on August 2, 2016. Manafort dismissed the idea as crazy and it never came up again. That’s a lie. The Judge herself noted multiple additional times the topic came up (Dec 2016; Inauguration; Feb 2017; and again in 2018). Manafort even ran polling on this topic in Ukraine. The purpose of this polling was to enable Manafort to sell to the US that Ukraine would be ok with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and just wanted ‘peace’. It was a push poll and a scam engineered to give the Trumpers a fake pretext to give Putin what he wanted: some form of recognition of the Crimea annexation.
Regarding the ______________ stuff (‘polling data’): The Manafort defense team also takes dead aim at Gates. But Gates’s claims are backed by email chains, which include emails from both Kilimnick and Manafort, and include attachments. The judge was particularly fed up with these attacks on Gates. I don’t think this will get them very far. They try to explain away the email as innocuous and the attachment as non material. They also attack the Gates 302 interview summary and dismiss the SCO’s view as a theory with a weak basis in fact.
Much of this is redacted, but Manafort’s team stuck was trying to explain away clear evidence and is unable to offer a straight up denial. When the special counsel’s office gets a turn to make its filing, they are going to squash the defense filing like stepping on a grape. Having read through the transcript of the hearing multiple times, the Judge accepts the evidence submitted as clear and convincing. Her questions were focused on whether it should be factored in at sentencing.
Regarding the Other DOJ Investigation, Manafort’s team does not question the factual account. Instead, they argue that manafort corrected himself in the same interview. Therefore, he may have become an unuseful witness for the prosecution, but that does not mean that this should be taken into account for sentencing. The truth is Manafort corrected himself when presented with evidence by the Special counsel’s office, and also with prodding from the defense counsel.
Regarding Contact with the Administration. Again, the defense team does not spend a lot of time addressing points raised by The SCO. They merely state that their evidence doesn’t support that Manafort had contact with the administration:
“A careful review of the basis for the OSC’s claims that this was a false statement reveals that the
proffered evidence fails to establish any direct or indirect contact with the administration by Mr. Manafort. Indeed, Mr. Manafort told the truth.”
This is a lie, of course. Manafort was in touch with people outside the administration who had contacts on the inside. He stated that in his proffer, and then walked it back. He did so in order to mitigate the liability exposure of these additional context, to conceal the extent to which he was reporting on the SCO’s activities to the White House through intermediaries, and to preserve his options to get a pardon. It would be great if this flowed back to Rudy Giuliani, and he somehow got nailed for this.
I hope the court recognizes that Manafort has no credibility, because he’s an inveterate, disingenuous crook working in cahoots with foreign dictators and intelligence.
That’s all probably right, but Trump also knows that Manafort can bury him. He is desperate to get Manafort out of Mueller’s reach.
Trump faces destruction on both sides. Nobody can predict what this lunatic will do when push comes to shove. And it will happen.
In my version of reality, Foghorn Leghorn is there to make that statement when Manafort is put away for life.
“I say, I say there you long haired ostrich coat wearing criminal bastard galoot, you were, I say you were in cahoots with them there varmints of questionable repute were you not?”
and then he takes out a sword and lops his head off, because in my reality, Quentin Tarentino is directing.
Manafort’s expiration date has already passed. Everything that Pauli knew, Gates knew. Gates flipped, and got the deal for flipping, and gave Mueller everything he needed to know. e.g. what happened in the “cigar meeting” in NY in August 2016? Mueller knows, because Gates flipped, and there are no signs that Mueller is un-happy with Gates.
The issue - and its a big on - is that had Manafort fully cooperated, it would have been two folks word on issues against (presumably one, Trump), but Manafort has lied to many times he is of no value for Mueller. He can’t use him for anything.
Assuming Manafort had a come to jesus moment and started being 100% honest, its unlikely he would tell Mueller anything new and it would not be usable anyway.
So Manafort has no capacity to damage Trump at this point, and is of no use to Mueller (other than as example of what happens when you fail to cooperate) and the end result of this is that Manafort is going to die in jail.