Yay! Only if you stand up to Judge Cranky will he respect you.
I think the prosecution should get to the meat of their case first.
Relevant as without reported income to support them!
The pictures of those hideous jackets have been all over the Internet and CNN. Unlikely that these non-sequestered jurors haven’t seen them. I do think this motion is timely, though. Ellis does respond to precedent and he has been a bit of a pain on this stuff.
This judge is cheating and violating case law. Whatta crook!
The judge did invite the Prosecutors to brief the issue. They did. Let’s see if the Defense has a response. My guess is they don’t and the judge will reluctantly let the government present its case.
Excellent. They are taking what the judge is giving them, and then fighting right back using his game.
No, he’s making sure all the bases are covered in case of appeal.
Umm, no. An appeal that is based on defiance of case law is a loser. There is no basis for the judge to defy case law, yet …
The judge is corrupt.
What are you even going on about? He’s not defying case law. He’s asked them to submit a brief regarding the case law so the bases are covered. Manafort’s lawyers can’t then use it on appeal. The appeals court will review what’s in the record, recognize Manafort’s lawyers had an opportunity to state their side of it and the court will move to the next issue. Yesterday they submitted proof of Manafort’s spending habits.
This may backfire on the prosecution. Even though many Americans hold resentment toward the rich, they also hope they themselves may one day be rich.
So, Mueller’s playing with fire here.
If you have the documentation that Manafort spent much more than he reported earning, then that’s all you need.
I wonder if the judge has had the same concerns about showing the profligate lifestyle of, for example, a drug kingpin?
Anyway, the government says they want this evidence to refute an argument that Manafort has not yet made. If he actually makes that argument during the defense case, the judge could turn around and let it in during the prosecution’s rebuttal.
They are laying the foundation: this is the style in which Manafort lived for [number of years] and then in [year] he lost his income source. For a while he was able to maintain that lifesyle by funneling money from non-declared, non-taxed foreign bank accounts (tax fraud) directly to vendors. Between the loss of income and money owed to oligarchs wealthy business persons of a Russian persuasion, he was in a money crunch. His solution was bank fraud and here is the paper evidence of that. It’s all very neatly tied up, but you can’t just leave the prologue out of the story.
Ostrich jacket? What the heck is something like that anyway? It sounds awful!
But more to the point, I’m grateful to TPM posters for their excellent points about Manafort’s income sources, money flow,and fueling an opulent lifestyle (and the reasons behind it). Thanks all! .
If it was a sole, “analytical” person to convince, that could be appropriate. Here we have 12 jurors, who, as a result of the selection process, have no (or limited opinion) of the case. You need to convince all of them that Manafort is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. You don’t leave any stone unturned to play it safe. All it takes is for 1 person to screw up your case.
No. The judge is not preventing jury tampering on Manafort’s behalf. Why is the jury not sequestered?
Because it’s insanely rare anywhere in the nation to sequester. Virginia does it even more rarely because the rocket docket typically dispatches criminal cases in less than a week. The cost is prohibitive and if the jury isn’t already tainted, a few tweets isn’t going to do it. Jurors hate it and if they don’t have to be taken out of their beds and homes, courts are loathe to do it. It’s a stressful time and having access to their belongings and friends and family for support is important.
Of course a Leftist Pinko ostrich hater like Mueller (and his 13 conflicted Dems) would punish an innocent Patriot like Manifort simply for accepting the Righteous Path of the Prosperity Gospel.