The only thing surprising about this opinion is its length. This was not a difficult ruling.
I don’t think anyone is surprised. I have seen a lot closer evidentiary questions go the prosecutor’s way.
Though Trusko’s name was on unit’s the lease, Manafort argued that Trusko did not have the authority to open the storage unit for the agent, Jeff Pfeiffer.
That’s a loser argument, as law students learn in the early weeks of crim pro.
These guys are quite the amateurs. Manafort and Cohen know they were in deep shit and a high line pro was after them. So why have shit in a storage shed…or at your home that will sink you? That shed should have been jammed full of exculpatory stuff and nothing more. A storage shed full of incriminating shit? A home and office with millions of incriminating docs? And that near a year after the investigations began. On just that I’d have to think Mueller’s is going to hammer these clowns and not break a sweat doing it.
If I were evil and greedy the first thing I would buy is a skull-shaped island.
The first thing I would burn down is the storage facility where all my evil incriminating documents are stored.
I mean, I’d take that old bean bag chair out of there first, I might want it some day.
Good news -I needed some good news.
Nothing even mildly surprising in the judge’s decision — but a good review by Ms. Sneed nevertheless. Thank you (@tierney).
Hmmm. Is that two strikes or three so far?
My guess is that this judge is creating a thorough and complete trial record in anticipation of appeals.
You are SO screwed, Paulie.
Life is good…
This should be the lead story. Good news for (non Confederate) Americans.
So people were fretting and reading the tea leaves because the judge was acerbic in his asides?
In Manafort’s case, Trusko held the lease. Manafort was just an authorized user. It seems like the storage unit was Manafort’s attempt to evade scrutiny. By sticking the unit in Trusko’s name, he hoped that Mueller wouldn’t find it. But since Mueller did find it, that wound up hampering Manafort’s ability to block them from access, since it’s ridiculous to argue that the person with the primary slot on the lease doesn’t have permission to allow a third party (i.e. the FBI) into the unit.
This and the other news from today-“oh oh oh I can’t prepare for my defense in jail because it’s so far to travel… oh but don’t move me to the other jail closer to home “ definitely paints a picture of someone who believes he’s smarter than everyone else.
Why he got away with his scams for so long is a worthwhile question.
Probably because FARA violations have been a lot like the sexual predation cases that are coming out in the #MeToo movement. They were “open secrets” for a long time, but everyone turned a blind eye because the men were “too powerful” or they were bankrolled by powerful men.
But that too is an amateurish move. Unless Trusko was an unknown person, one that Manafort never associated with, it was stupid to use him or hide the remotest association with him from a former director of the FBI. The smart move was to see these documents as nothing but bad and destroy, not hide them. Same for Cohen.
Burn all the paper docs or run them though a bucket of bleach. All electronic docs should be sitting on the bottom of the East River. They had months to do this.
It probably took Mueller, et.al., all of seven minutes to find it. So much for criminal mastermindery.
Way more than three. If he were a ballplayer, Manafort would be in the low minors.