Paul Manafort heads to jail
Manafort’s bail has been revoked:
Paul Manafort was sent to jail Friday by a federal judge who said she couldn’t turn a blind eye to claims that he attempted to tamper with witnesses, adding pressure on President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager to cooperate with a U.S. probe of Russian election meddling.
U.S. authorities immediately took Manafort into custody and escorted him out of a packed courtroom, where his wife looked on during the hearing…
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington revoked Manafort’s bail, saying she had no choice but to lock him up because she couldn’t stop him from contacting people.
Is this unusual in cases of white-collar crime allegations such as Manafort’s? I don’t know, and so far I haven’t seen anything that indicates an answer. What I do know is this:
Jailing Manafort gives Special Counsel Robert Mueller more leverage as Manafort weighs whether to cooperate and spill any secrets he knows about Trump and the campaign. Confronting possible criminal charges in New York, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen may have a similar choice ahead of him.
There is no question in my mind that Trump is the real quarry and Manafort an instrument to get to that quarry. In addition, of course, Manafort himself is not a savory character and may indeed be guilty of a host of things that have nothing to do with Trump.
In pressuring a person in this way to spill the beans on someone else (usually not a president, however; I can’t think of any precedent for that except for Susan McDougal, who was jailed for contempt for not answering questions about Bill Clinton in the Whitewater investigation) you run the risk of two things. The first is that they have no beans to spill. The second is that they will lie to save their own skins. For some prosecutors, that latter is a feature rather than a bug.
Not so long ago, people were saying “In pressuring a person [by waterboarding] you run the risk of two things. The first is that they have no beans to spill. The second is that they will lie to save their own skins. For some prosecutors, that latter is a feature rather than a bug.”
Russ, as the saying goes, “If the Left didn’t have double principles, it would have none at all.”
On Manafort and the unconstitutionality of the current proceedings:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/paul-manaforts-bail-situation-is-ridiculous-and-unconstitutional?utm_campaign=wex_widget&utm_source=weeklystandard.com&utm_medium=wex_widget
Obviously team Mueller wants to pressure Manafort to get at djt. Trump should announce he will pardon Manafort of any and all convictions. After all, djt is condemned by the left no matter what he does. Then fire Mueller and release all of his records and that of his entire team into the public domain. Fight corruption not with more corruption, but with full disclosure.
As a result of this, how can any defendent now presume that confidentiality obtains with his lawyer?
Since a defendent cannot now know that the prosecutor will not learn of any information he shares with his lawyer… the defendent must now withhold any information that might assist the prosecution (itself a form of self-incrimination). But which may be for the lawyer critical information… so how can the defendent now receive the very best defense that his lawyer can provide?
Isn’t it the norm that lawyers defending a client invariably demand that their client tell them everything? Asserting that they cannot defend a client to the best of their ability without full knowledge of all that the client knows?
IMO, the Manafort case is of fundamental and extreme importance because this precedent eviscerates our justice system. Arguably, a fair trial in America is now impossible, especially if the defendent has offended the Left.
“If the Left didn’t have double principles, it would have none at all.”
A double standard is really a (different) single standard. In this case, “whatever moves the ball down the field today is the principle”. History begins today.
The object here is to intimidate and to squeeze Manafort, to force him to come up with something, anything–true or not, to “sing” but, also as likely, to “compose”–that can be charged against President Trump, to bring President Trump down–as FBI agent Peter Strzok texted, “to stop him.”
I am no fan of Manafort, who seems like a shady character, but the way he has been treated by the DOJ, the FBI and Mueller, and now the courts, has been nothing less than a litany of actions that would not be out of place in some two bit banana republic; treatment that should never be handed out to a U.S. citizen who has not been accused of a violent crime.
Mueller and his prosecutor’s tactics have been called “hardball,” I’d call them Gestapo—like.
First, they had to reach back a reported 12 years into Manafort’s past to find something they could portray as illegal, and justifying their actions. How is this related in any way to Trump and Muller’s supposed Russia collusion investigation?
Then, there was the 3-4 A.M. raid on Manafort’s house during which, it was reported, armed FBI agents broke down his front door, and rousted Manafort and his wife from their beds at gunpoint. No doubt, next, they probably tossed his house “looking for evidence,” carelessly and/or deliberately breaking whatever they could in the process. What this most resembled, apparently, was a no-knock raid on some major MS-13 gang headquarters, or the home of a major–and violent–drug kingpin.
How about the raid on Manafort’s lawyer’s office, and the major violation of the supposedly sacrosanct lawyer client privilege that involved?
Then, there have been the court appearances—designed as many others have also been–to not only intimidate their target, but also to drain his finances, as he pays for legal representation–a slick way to persecute and punish someone without having to actually have a trial and have to present credible evidence that he actually committed a crime.
Now, we have a Clinton donor, and Obama appointed, Democrat-friedly judge, Amy Berman Jackson, (she threw out a wrongful death lawsuit by the parents of two of the men killed at Benghazi, who argued that Hillary was responsible for those deaths, because she revealed the location of the Ambassador’s meeting in Benghazi beforehand by putting it on her unsecured email server, one that we now know was penetrated by at least one foreign intelligence agency) throwing the elderly Manafort–his passport already taken, and hardly a flight risk–into jail for months awaiting trial, based solely on an indictment–with no chance, apparently, given him for even an evidentiary hearing to be held, or for Manafort to have a defense lawyer present a defense.
This is the treatment we give to hardened criminals, to Mob bosses and to the violent heads of Drug Cartels, not to people who may be, at best, non-violent, white collar criminals.
This whole thing is a shameful travesty of how our justice system should operate, and it should concern each and everyone of us, for if they can railroad, jam up, and jail Manafort, they can do the same thing to any one of us.