Yepper. Under the well known legal rule of Casis Puttanesca: You can’t charge a guy with murder if you find the hooker’s body in the dumpster while looking for evidence that he’d ripped the tag off the mattress -it’s totally unfair. TOTALLY.
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I think that goes a long way to explaining why prison looks like an option to him.
He stiffed a lot of Russians and knows a lot of secrets . He thinks prison might be a good place to avoid nerve gas, a polonium cocktail or a poison umbrella
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It’s not all of a sudden. Started in earnest in 2014. When Trump decided to run.
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Could Manafort (or anyone else, supposing they are super-connected or super-rich) negotiate to serve their sentence under house arrest?
"In the filing, Manafort’s lawyers also asked the judge to dismiss the indictment’s forfeiture allegation, which would require Manafort to forfeit property involved in the alleged money laundering scheme if convicted."
Real estate agents would be SO disappointed.
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At some point Manafort will need to consider cooperating wlth Mueller and demanding the witness protection program so he can escape Putin. That may be the only way he survives.
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Which do you think would be easier: Paying off a prison guard or inmate to kill Manafort while he sits in prison, or tracking him down in federal witness protection in parts unknown? Whether or not he takes a plea and agrees to cooperate, as long as he’s alive he’ll remain a huge liability.
I’d argue that he becomes an even bigger liability with the passage time. A couple of months in prison or jail can convince even the most hardened criminals to turn state’s witness. I can’t imagine what that would do for a pampered princess like Manafort. When that pardon never comes and a new Democratic administration and AG are in place I imagine Manafort will be beating down their doors offering up whatever he can in exchange for a pardon or commutation. I’m sure Putin imagines that too. And I just can’t fathom why anyone believes Putin is perfectly willing to kill people who simply know too much, yet somehow Manafort would be allowed to carry on safely in prison.
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He’s not going to be eligible for Club Fed since his sentence will most likely be a lot longer than five years.
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Desperate words from a desperate man.
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The forfeiture is a big deal, because it means Manafort won’t have a lot of resources to make prison life easier or safer. Can he petition for club fed on the grounds of danger or infirmity? (A friend who did a year there said it really sucked, but mostly because it was prison.)
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Mueller could presumably hand the evidence off to a regular US attorney for prosecution rather than bringing charges himself. In this environment that would be subject to political interference, but it’s presumably the normal way.
That said, this is interesting because it sets the precedent for the rest of Mueller’s investigation. This is probably as far out of the original mandate as it will get. If the judge accepts the charges here (which is almost certain), then there’s no ground to challenge, for example, charges against Trump for laundering Russian money through Trump properties.
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Not a criminal lawyer, but I’ve done a fair amount of looking at federal sentencing law as people in the news have been carted off to the land of unflattering jumpsuits. And as best I can tell, the answer is, nope. Federal sentencing laws, passed by Republicans determined to get tough on these lawless color . . . er, lawless people are unyeilding. You do 100% of the time if the sentence is less than a year, at least 85% of it if the sentence is over a year, you get the 15% through “good time,” credits, and you do all of it in actual, for real prisons.
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I have thought it was a message to Manafort. We know you have daughters too. His long tenure on the dark side may put him in the same category as the other victims of Putin’s murder spree. What he knows that might worry Putin may go beyond the run-of-the-mill Trump mess.
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Thanks.
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this judge told him “no public statements” and he went to the dutchman lawyer to contact one of the old time russian associates for assistance in creating a public statement. this judge knows not ALL the Manafort offenses predate the Trump campaign.
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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! (deep inhale, deep exhale, deep inhale) BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
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Frankly, given what’s happened in the UK to people with connections to Putin, dying in jail is likely his preferred outcome. If he somehow wriggles free of these charges, I give him two weeks, at the outside, before he goes headfirst into a hole in the desert outside Las Vegas or is found in his apartment dead of umbrella wounds.
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If he does Federal time (i.e doesn’t expire or receive a pardon), my money is Butner BOP. It’s where Bernie Madoff is housed, as well as other fraudsters. Butner has multiple facilities with low and medium security, as well as a medical facility that treats inmates of all security levels.
I would be surprised to see Martin Shkreli there or at Danbury BOP in the near future.
I imagine that Putin’s recent remarks about exterminating “traitors” sent a chill up Manafort’s spine.
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