Will a Manafort verdict come soon, and what will it be? — 27 Comments
I’m going to go with not guilty for the most part, generally because the prosecution’s star witness is a lying crapweasel.
If ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ is the standard against which they are judging then I second the not guilty guess. The star witness is not credible, which establishes doubt well beyond the reasonable standard.
Please note that I am horribly bad at the predictions game – so don’t place any costly bets based on my opinion.
I refuse to guess what any jury will do; reading the crystal ball is a fraught enterprise, as any attorney should learn in Law School, much less in practice.
However, this is as good a hook as any to pull in a few more “Mueller is a weasel” links.
“The best explanation of the firing of FBI director James Comey and of the subsequent investigation by special counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller may just come from a social scientist who died years before President Trump took office.
When James Q. Wilson died in 2012, he was remembered primarily for his influential 1982 Atlantic article with George Kelling, “Broken Windows: The Police And Neighborhood Safety,” advocating police tactics focused on maintaining order and reducing fear.
It turns out, though, that Wilson — whose colleagues in the government department at Harvard included Henry Kissinger and Daniel Patrick Moynihan — also wrote a whole book about the FBI.
That book, The Investigators: Managing FBI And Narcotics Agents, was published in 1978 … It is based on in part on Professor Wilson’s personal experience as an adviser to FBI director Clarence Kelley, who served between 1973 and 1978.
Its insights relevant to Messrs. Comey and Mueller come in a chapter considering the motivation of FBI executives, and of government officials in general. Wilson writes, “In my view, it is the desire for autonomy, and not for large budgets, new powers, or additional employees, that is the dominant motive of public executives.”
What does Wilson mean by “autonomy”? His book explains, “An agency is autonomous to the degree it can act independently of some or all of the groups that have the authority to constrain it.” Autonomy comes “by acquiring sufficient good will and prestige as to make attacks on oneself or one’s agency costly for one’s critics.”
This craving for autonomy applies not only at the executive level but also to front-line investigators, Wilson writes: “A detective wants, above all else, to be left alone and to be backed up.”
For much of its history, Wilson writes, the FBI “enjoyed an almost unparalleled degree of autonomy.” Wilson describes it as “extraordinary autonomy.”
The nice thing about this “autonomy” theory of the FBI is that it potentially explains both the bureau’s leaks about Hillary Clinton in 2016 and its reaction to President Trump in 2017 and 2018.
…
Mr. Mueller’s investigation is being described as a defense of democracy, or as a defense of the rule of law, or as an investigation into possible obstruction of justice or a coverup. After I read Wilson’s book, though, what the Mueller investigation looked like above all was precisely an effort by the FBI to defend its “extraordinary autonomy.”
“Autonomy” of the FBI might have certain advantages. It would prevent politically motivated meddling into criminal investigations, the same way that the “independence” of the Federal Reserve prevents politically motivated interference with interest rates.
A fully autonomous FBI, though, is inconsistent with Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which states, “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Even if FBI directors such as Messrs. Comey or Mueller might prefer to operate without guidance from presidents or without guidance from attorneys general appointed by presidents, such a set-up would render the FBI unaccountable. Governments, the Declaration of Independence says, derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Presidents Obama and Trump were elected. No one elected Comey or Mueller.
Wilson concludes his book with a warning. There have been, he writes, powerful law enforcement agencies in the world that operated without the constraints of political superiors or of public opinion. The record of such authoritarian secret police forces, “judged by the test of human liberty, is not promising.” “
Don’t forget the weasel at DOJ – we talked about him yesterday.
What I can’t understand is how Mueller got away with, and the court allowed, first, jailing Manafort–who is, at the worst, just a pretty elderly white collar criminal, and not some young, strong and crazy, violent, feral menace to society–pending the outcome of his trial, but most especially, with putting Manafort in solitary confinement.
How could that be justified?
I’m hoping that if Manfort is acquitted, he can sue the hell out of Mueller personally and his team, as well as the judge in this case for false imprisonment.
I’ve looked up a few political trials and the range seems to be 2 hours to 5.5 hours per count. In this case, that would be 35-100 hours of deliberation, with the chances of acquittal on any given count directly proportional to the time allocation to deliberation. As we speak, it’s up to 29 hours and holding.
In other news, Michael Cohen is due to make a court appearance at 4:00 pm. The tool CNN is employing to cover the courthouse in Alexandria, Va. fancies the Cohen appearance will be a where-were-you-when-you-found-out-Kennedy-was-shot moment.
Snow – Mueller’s treatment of Manafort has been outrageous from the beginning (see numerous reports by Andy McCarthy). If I were on the jury, I would want to know what, indeed, justified those actions, especially compared to the oh-so-careful handling of the malefactors on the other side of the controversy.
* * *
Some more on the players on the main stage, now that Manafort is manifestly just an “off Broadway” aging drama.
“Buried at the bottom of a court document Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed Friday is a reference to a mysterious $10,000 cash payment given to George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser who has been charged with giving false statements to the FBI.
On the final page of a memo recommending that Papadopoulos serve up to six months in jail, Mueller said that Papadopoulos told investigators about $10,000 in cash that he received from a foreign national who he suspected to be a foreign spy.
…
While Mueller’s court filing makes no other reference to the individual, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned that a man named Charles Tawil gave Papadopoulos $10,000 during a meeting in an Israeli hotel room in July 2017.
Sources familiar with the matter told TheDCNF Tawil flew to the Greek island of Mykonos to meet Papadopoulos and his now-wife, Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos. Tawil invited the pair to Israel, but Mangiante Papadopoulos stayed behind.
Papadopoulos gave the money to an attorney in Greece before traveling back to the U.S., a source told TheDCNF on the condition of anonymity. ”
Told them voluntarily, or after interrogation to make him ‘fess up? Did they already know about the bribe — which it patently was — and was this another Page-like set-up?
* * *
I would pay to see this cage match.
“Former CIA Director John Brennan seemed to promise a lawsuit Sunday after President Donald Trump revoked his security clearance for “erratic conduct and behavior.”
Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, welcomed Brennan’s threat.
…
“We’ll take his deposition right away,” Giuliani said. “As the plaintiff he’d have to go first. I’d volunteer to do that case for the president. I’d love to have Brennan under oath for I don’t know how many days — two, three days? We’ll find out about Brennan.”
Giuliani went on to suggest that he would question Brennan about alleged intelligence failures that took place under his leadership, including the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, a terror attack which killed 19 U.S. servicemen while he was CIA station chief in Riyadh. He also alluded to Brennan’s 1976 vote for the Communist Party USA’s presidential candidate, Gus Hall.”
* * *
I didn’t remember that Brennan was connected with the Khobar disaster.
Going back to the Mudd-slinging, Phil really came unhinged, while Paris Dennard projected a very calm, reasonable demeanor and good arguments (embedded at the end of Dyer’s post below).
This is how you get more Trump.
“I was disappointed in Chris Wallace this weekend (on Fox News Sunday) for characterizing the Brennan security clearance flap as a case of Trump punishing a critic, by wielding the power of the security clearance over him. The implication was that this was a petty and personal move by Trump. The further implication was that it would have an intimidating effect on the speech of those whose priority is to keep their clearances.
(On behalf of thousands of mid-level intelligence professionals past and present, I will insert here one brisk “Boo-fricking-hoo.”) [Dyer being one of those pros herself]
A few pundits have done reasonably well by the topic. But most are missing the mark by focusing on whether it damages Brennan’s marketability on the punditry circuit.
…
Still others have focused on the point that there is monetary value to a departed senior official’s continued access to classified information. This gets at the actual important point, but in most cases falls short of developing it.
So here is the important point. Why in the world should anyone in America retain official access to classified information while being paid to contribute material to a news organization?
What kind of insanity is that? However that practice got started, it should stop immediately. It is ridiculous to suggest that there is anything judicious or sensible about allowing such a situation.
Many departed officials retain their clearances if they are going to move into government consulting jobs, or other jobs with government contractors. That situation may or may not need review, but it’s not the issue here.
The issue is departed officials, whether civil service or military retirees, or appointed officials like Brennan, who retain courtesy clearances because of their seniority, and then hire out to news organizations to be expert commentators.
It takes an idiot to not see that that is blowing the control valve off the pipeline for classified information.
This isn’t about personalities, power moves, or freedom of speech. It’s about a moral hazard the size of this galaxy and the next six all gaggled together, and one to which an end should be put forthwith. ….
You want to comment as a paid consultant on intelligence or national security, with CNN, or NBC, or Fox, or the New York Times or Politico or anyone other media outlet, you should do it without being read in for any current classified access. Yes, it should be just that simple. How foolish to even suggest otherwise.”
* *
One small caveat is that, as we have all been tutored lately, having an active (or even temporarily suspended) clearance is not the same as being “read in” to have access to specific classified data, but apparently the Great Leak Machine doesn’t always pay attention to the niggling details.
It’s a lot easier to justify talking to somebody who is still “cleared” even if not “read in” to the program you want to discuss.
I’m going with “A lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
If Scott Johnson can’t figure out the cases, I have no hope.
This is Papa… not Manafort, but they are analogous in duplicity, opacity, and hypocrisy.
“Robert Mueller has filed a 10-page sentencing memo in the case of George Papadopolous (embedded below via Scribd). In the revised authorized version of the origin of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign, Papaoplous looms large. He is allegedly the man. Having reviewed the sentencing memo, however, Bryon York concludes that “Papadopoulos emerges as bit player in Trump-Russia affair.” Margot Cleveland explores the perplexities of the sentencing memo in “FBI Reveals It’s Either Lying Or Incompetent.” Cleveland’s column is deeply troubling.
I can’t explain. Trying to understand what is revealed here, I despair that we will ever truly penetrate what emerges ever more clearly as the greatest political scandal in American history.“
More good points from Scott on the left’s obfuscation of the DOJ/FBI cases. His observations are in accord with the Twitter stream by Kim Strassel I linked yesterday: every word in the article is true, and the whole thing is a lie. (see the repeat at the end of this comment)
“At the Weekly Standard yesterday Eric Felten blasted the New York Times’s depiction of Bruce Ohr as “a midlevel government worker” and “little-known career Justice Department official.”
Indeed, according to one of the Times’s classic triple-byline stories (concluding with credit to two more reporters), Ohr was a faceless bureaucrat deposited “deep into the government bureaucracy.” In case you missed the Times’s point, the team of three plus two reporters also puts it this way: Ohr is “[a] largely anonymous part of the 113,000-person Justice Department work force.”
Sometimes it takes five Times reporters to obscure the critical facts. The Times’s treatment of Bruce Ohr — the apparent conduit for Christopher Steele to the FBI after the FBI was compelled to terminate its relationship with Steele, as Felten also explains — presents a valuable case study. “Anyone familiar with Washington could be forgiven for assuming that means Ohr is a GS-14, or maybe at most a GS-15,” wrote Felten, “the typical job scale for a midlevel federal careerist. You’d never think from reading the New York Times article that until recently Ohr was one of the most senior officials at Justice Department—associate deputy attorney general.”
Tucker Carlson invited Felten to discuss his column on Fox News last night. Felten commented: “What’s funny is they keep referring to Bruce Ohr as ‘little-known.’ And he is ‘little-known’ if you read the New York Times or the Washington Post, where they don’t tell you about Bruce Ohr.” Exactly.”
Thread by @KimStrassel: “It is never fun to tackle fact checkers, but this one is a case study in that modern art of omitting details, stating unsupportable assertions as fact, slipping things in, manipulating a narrative. Opinion as “fact.” So let’s go through it. ”
Kim thorough fisks the WaPo articles “Who is Bruce Ohr?” and hands out a gazillian Alternative-Pinocchios for their word-smithing — nothing they say is literally untrue, but what they don’t say makes the entire article a lie.
Here’s a PLB commenter with some fact checking on Ohr and the DOJ, and some more just for fun. Somebody later lists the top pecking order of government service, but it was too long:
Bill Shipley
pecking order — i have commented to various reporters to quit referring to Ohr as the “fourth most senior DOJ official.” I think that is the narrative the NYT is fighting against. But it is wrong — early on someone wrote that his office was “four doors away from Sally Yates”, and that got twisted into the fourth most senior report. But you should not minimize his position. The Deputy AG runs DOJ on a daily basis. All operational components report to the DAG. The Attorney General deals more with policy, WH, Congress, etc.
Bruce Ohr was an “Associate Deputy AG” — typically there are about 10 people with that title in any given administration. They are the senior career staffers in the DAG’s office. They are the DAG’s “eyes and ears” in monitoring the daily operations of the Department. One of the group is the “Principal Associate” — the first among equals. The Associates decide what issues they can resolve, and what issues need to go to the DAG to resolve. They deal with conflicts between DOJ components — when DEA and FBI disagree on how to pursue a joint investigation, the Associate DAG solves the problem. Ohr was one of those 10 people. Very very senior — but a career employee, not a political appointee.
* * *
Of course, I think he was a VERY political appointee (as do some of the commenters who work in the gubmint).
* * *
This is just funny, I don’t care who you are.
John M Asquith
I am reminded of a recent internet meme with a closeup of a cat’s ears. In it they explained that a cat has 32 muscles in its ears which makes it capable of ignoring us at will. Indeed it will take more and more reporters to obscure the truth of the FBI’s perifidy.
Jeff Johnson
Perhaps the Times secretly agrees with Trump and Guiliani, that sometimes the truth isn’t the truth. They just have to work really hard to obscure it.
Galen Mcbride
Faith, you’re almost correct. Current DCIA is a career Agency employee, and Brennan was a career CIA employee. Current DDCIA is a former career employee.
When the political appointees are political, that’s pretty much dog-bites-man. When the careerists – when they ascend to the top, but more importantly when they are senior but not political appointees like Ohr – are political, that is the essence of the “Deep State.”
* * *
Robert Shotzberger
The Times knows little.
Ron Kean
What they know may be a different story. The Times wants their readers to know little.
* * *
Todd Seibt
Former reporter here, 25 years in the biz.
Whenever you see more than two bylines, you are reading a blenderized mess, that also had at least three editors chopping the facts into very fine pieces and putting in their two cents worth, even if their worth was less than two cents.
In addition, all of the reporters most likely did not work the same shifts or days, so they never sat down and actually compared their notes. And with no one in charge, no one followed up on the gaping holes in the story.
Walk — no, run! — away from such stories.
…
In a multiple-byline story, there is no accountability.
* * *
Kenneth Felton
How many media poodles does it take to screw in a llight bulb?
Five, but they still don’t know how to turn it on.
* * *
David Stevens The same paper that filed a FOIA request to get at the municipal emails of Bret Kavenaugh’s wife, to you know, provide the full story, needs 5 reporters to dismiss even questioning the glaring connection between Ohr and Fusion GPS, where HIS wife worked?
They not only not question it but put out a piece to discourage others who might. Only fear of what might be revealed could motivate the creation of this dodgy article. It certainly ain’t journalism.
* * *
Indeed.
Don’t miss this one by Mark Penn at The Hill, on whether Mueller can even be doing what he’s doing.
“Manafort’s lead attorney Kevin Downing objected to Ellis’s decision not to provide a new verdict form with a third option of “hung” for each count.
He said the jurors shouldn’t be misled to think a hung jury at the end of this trial isn’t appropriate.
If the jurors fail to reach a consensus, Ellis told Downing he would “consider accepting what they reach.”
He brought the jury back into the courtroom at 10 minutes to noon and instructed them to try to reach a unanimous verdict. Ellis told them if they fail to agree, the case is left open and undecided.
In the instructions he read, he said the jurors should not hesitate to re-examine their views and change their decision if they think it’s erroneous.
“In conferring together, each of you should pay attention and respect the views of the other,” he said.
Ellis reminded the jury it is their duty to agree on a verdict if they can do so without violating their individual conscience.
The jury is in their fourth day of deliberations in the trial, the first test in court for special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of prosecutors.
Ellis also lightly scolded the press, asking them not to disrupt the proceedings by running out of the room with breaking news. He said the reporters could run in and out of the overflow courtroom three floors below as much as they please.
After those remarks, the court marshal prevented any other reporters from leaving the room until the proceedings were adjourned.”
Another peripheral player – why isn’t Mueller ready to proceed in the oldest case that he’s prosecuted? Still looking for Flynn to “suddenly remember” something he hasn’t told them before?
“Special counsel Robert Mueller has again delayed scheduling a sentencing hearing for former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
“Due to the status of its investigation, the Special Counsel’s Office does not believe that this matter is ready to be scheduled for a sentencing hearing at this time,” read a joint status report released Tuesday.
Tuesday’s delay is the fourth time prosecutors have asked to delay Flynn’s sentencing.
…
As an element of his guilty plea, Flynn has been cooperating with Mueller’s team in its ongoing investigation of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.”
The judge will be polling the jury shortly. Supposedly, if he’s satisfied they are hopelessly deadlocked on the counts on which they haven’t come to a decision, he’ll declare a mistrial on those counts and read the verdict on the counts on which they did make a decision. Supposedly, they’ve deadlocked on 10 counts and reached a verdict on 8.
The control over information and it’s dissemination is everything.
How do any of us–if not present at the incident itself, in it’s entirety–ever know for sure what happened, who was there, what their demeanor was, what they said and/or did, or what the event that happened really and fully consisted of?
How are we to know if something of key importance is being hidden from us, and just not reported on? Can we ever be sure that the MSM has just not collectively turned it’s head away from something they just don’t want to see, or us to know?
If we don’t have all of the background information–the real, true, actual, objective, and complete facts–how can we sort the truly significant from what is not of any real significance and consequence? Spend our time thinking about and dealing with the mountain, and not the molehill.
Which one of us can know with certainty–if not intimately involved in something–if some key piece of information is missing, or if some key document has either been withheld, has been tampered with, or is being willfully misinterpreted?
Here is where an objective, honest, and thorough Press–reporting things “without fear or favor,” as they used to say– is so critically important, and today’s Press is neither objective, nor honest, nor thorough.
As long as the Left and their servants the MSM control the “narrative,” we will never be fully sure that we are being told, “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” about anything, much less things of great significance and consequence.
Mistrial on 10 counts
Guilty on 8 counts: 1 of hiding foreign bank accounts, 2 of defrauding lenders, and 5 of tax evasion.
Snow on Pine on August 21, 2018 at 4:37 pm at 4:37 pm said:
The control over information and it’s dissemination is everything.
* *
Good essay.
I have faced this same problem in my own family, with two of them wanting me to come down on who I will side with about a conversation they had to which I was not a party.
Both of them believe they are telling “the real truth” about what was said.
Yesterday I said to some friends I predict one or two guilty verdicts. I guess I was a little low, but still, the majority of counts were mistrialed. I doubt that there will be another trial, and I’m sure that Manafort will appeal.
So, does this mean that Manafort will be released from the “hole” pending his appeal?
No. The DC judge is a cat’s paw of Mueller.
If I were a commentator on FOX, say, I’d be making comparisons with the Dreyfus Affair, saying that being a Trump Administration employee/supporter–in today’s hyper partisan political atmosphere–is the equivalent of being a Jew in 1894, during the Third French Republic, with the malevolent animus being at the same level, as is the same level of railroading.
Snow — I hadn’t thought of it before, but there really are a lot of parallels in the cases of Dreyfus and Russia-gate.
The review that I most agree with says this:
“In 1862, Emile Zola(Paul Muni) and his friend Paul Cezanne(Vladimir Sokoloff) are a pair of starving and freezing artists trying to survive in Paris. Even a regular job in a bookstore does not last long for Zola. What does change Zola’s fortunes is an opportune encounter with Nana(Edna O’Brien Moore) after they save her from arrest by the police. After which, she relays her story of woe which inspires Zola to write a novel. That turns out to be the first of many bestsellers for him and the beginning of a very comfortable life. And then there is the case of Alfred Dreyfus(Joseph Schildkraut). Despite its title, “The Life of Emile Zola” is really not a biopic. Rather, its first thirty minutes about Zola’s rise to fame just serves as a prelude to its take on the Alfred Dreyfus case which might have been still controversial at the time this was made. As such, this movie makes an excellent case for the role of the artist in society being a socially conscious one to which it provides a prime example. That comes complete with rousing speeches, very good performances and crowd scenes which Shakespeare would be proud of.”
He leaves off the point that Zola struggled a long time before writing his accusation of the injustice against Dreyfus, and was so vilified (and prosecuted) by the populace, media, government, and military that he had to move to England (giving up a lot of that comfort and public acclaim) until he (and Dreyfus) were finally vindicated.
“The Dreyfus Affair (French: l’affaire Dreyfus, pronounced [la.f?? d??.fys]) was a political scandal that divided the Third French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. The affair is often seen as a modern and universal symbol of injustice,[1] and it remains one of the most notable examples of a complex miscarriage of justice and antisemitism The major role played by the press and public opinion proved influential in the lasting social conflict..
The scandal began in December 1894 with the treason conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young Alsatian French artillery officer of Jewish descent. Sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, Dreyfus was imprisoned on Devil’s Island in French Guiana, where he spent nearly five years.
Evidence came to light in 1896—primarily through an investigation instigated by Georges Picquart, head of counter-espionage—identifying a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy as the real culprit. After high-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, a military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy after a trial lasting only two days. The Army then accused Dreyfus with additional charges based on falsified documents. Word of the military court’s framing of Dreyfus and of an attempted cover-up began to spread, chiefly owing to J‘accuse…!, a vehement open letter published in a Paris newspaper in January 1898 by writer Émile Zola. Activists put pressure on the government to reopen the case.
In 1899, Dreyfus was returned to France for another trial. …The new trial resulted in another conviction and a 10-year sentence, but Dreyfus was given a pardon and set free. Eventually all the accusations against Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless. In 1906 Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army. He served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He died in 1935.
The affair from 1894 to 1906 divided France deeply and lastingly into two opposing camps: the pro-Army, mostly Catholic “anti-Dreyfusards” and the anticlerical, pro-republican Dreyfusards. It embittered French politics and encouraged radicalization.”
After the publication of J’Accuse:
“General Billot, Minister of War, filed a complaint against Zola and Alexandre Perrenx, the manager of L’Aurore, to be heard at the Assises of the Seine from 7 to 23 February 1898. Defamation of a public authority was liable to trial in the Cour d’Assises, while insults to private figures—such as journalists and intellectuals—uttered by the nationalist and antisemitic press were limited to the civil adversarial system. (The taxpayer is at risk in the first case, while only the plaintiff is at risk in the second.) The minister referred to only three passages of Zola’s article,[140] eighteen lines out of hundreds. He accused Zola of having written that the court martial had committed “unlawful acts […] by order”.[141] The trial opened in an atmosphere of extreme violence—Zola had been the object of “the most shameful attacks”[Note 29] as well as important support and congratulations.[Note 30]
Fernand Labori, Zola’s lawyer, intended to call about 200 witnesses. The details of the Dreyfus Affair, unknown to most of the public, were published in the press. Several papers[Note 31] published shorthand notes verbatim of the debates every day to build support in the population. These notes were, for the Dreyfusards, an essential tool for later debates. The nationalists, behind Henri Rochefort, however, were more visible and organized riots, which forced the prefect of police to intervene to protect Zola whenever he left the facility[142] after every hearing.[143]
This trial was also the scene of a real legal battle in which the rights of the defence were constantly violated.[144] Many observers were aware of the collusion between France’s political and military worlds. Evidently the court received instructions not to raise the subject of former judicial errors. President Delegorgue, on the pretext of the long duration of the hearings, juggled the law incessantly to ensure that the trial dealt only with the alleged defamation by Zola. Delegorgue’s phrase “the question will not be put” was repeated dozens of times.[145].
Zola was sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of 3,000 francs,[Note 32] which was the maximum penalty. This harshness was due to the atmosphere of violence surrounding the trial. “The excitement of the audience and the exasperation of the crowd in front of the courthouse were so violent that one could fear the worst excesses if the jury acquitted Mr. Zola”.[147] However, the Zola trial was rather a victory for the Dreyfusards.[148] Indeed, the affair and its contradictions had been widely discussed throughout the trial, especially by the military. In addition, the violent attacks against Zola and the injustice of the conviction of Dreyfus reinforced the commitment of the Dreyfusards. … Even more than the Dreyfus Affair the Zola affair resulted in a regrouping of intellectual forces into two opposing camps.
On 2 April 1898 an application to the Supreme Court received a favourable response. This was the court’s first intervention in the affair. The military court made the complaint, rather than the minister. Prosecutor-General Manau supported a review of the Dreyfus trial and strongly opposed the anti-Semites. The judges of the military court, whom Zola had challenged, sued him for libel. The case was brought before the Assizes of Seine-et-Oise in Versailles where the public was considered more favourable to the army and more nationalistic. On 23 May 1898, at the first hearing, Mr. Labori appealed to the Supreme Court regarding the change of jurisdiction, which adjourned the trial and postponed the hearing to 18 July 1898. Labori advised Zola to leave France for England before the end of the trial, which the writer did, departing for a one-year exile in England. The defendants were convicted again. As for Colonel Picquart, he found himself again in prison.
Henry unmasked, the case is rekindled
The acquittal of Esterhazy, the convictions of Émile Zola and of Georges Picquart, and the continued presence of an innocent man in prison had a considerable national and international effect.[151] France was exposed as an arbitrary state, which contradicted its founding republican principles. Anti-Semitism made considerable progress and riots were common throughout the year 1898. However politicians were still in denial about the affair. In April and May 1898, they were mostly concerned with elections, “
“plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”
And they say there aren’t two systems of “justice,” and that equal treatment and equal justice under the law still prevails.
Compare and contrast with the treatment given to Paul Manafort–
Today also comes the news that, despite multiple reports of a a ton of extremely suspicious activities that point to the unauthorized penetration and hacking of the computers of dozens of Democrat members of the House of Representatives, a judge in DC has sentenced former Democrat Computer IT administrator, Pakistani Imran Awan, formerly very close to Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to no jail time, no fines for his admitted bank fraud, and just three months of supervised community service as his punishment.
Since Awan was not charged for any of his other very suspicious activities involving Congress, not tried for bank fraud, but for a bargained down charge of merely lying on a loan application, this allowed prosecutors to sweep this whole much more important and consequential Congressional computer scandal under the rug.
In imposing her less than nothing sentence, the Obama appointed judge even went so far as to say that Awan had, in fact, been persecuted, and had “suffered enough.”
Snow – in re Awan and the DNC in general – people looking for treason are overlooking the obvious in favor of the chimerical.
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I’m going to go with not guilty for the most part, generally because the prosecution’s star witness is a lying crapweasel.
If ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ is the standard against which they are judging then I second the not guilty guess. The star witness is not credible, which establishes doubt well beyond the reasonable standard.
Please note that I am horribly bad at the predictions game – so don’t place any costly bets based on my opinion.
I refuse to guess what any jury will do; reading the crystal ball is a fraught enterprise, as any attorney should learn in Law School, much less in practice.
However, this is as good a hook as any to pull in a few more “Mueller is a weasel” links.
https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/26/the-lies-at-the-heart-of-the-mueller-indictments/
https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/20/the-lies-at-the-heart-of-the-mueller-indictments-framing-assange/
http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/20/papers-saying-papadopoulos-lied-fbi-fbi-shows-either-also-lying-incompetent/
And the FBI is looking more and more like Toad Hall after the weasel invasion.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2011/07/27/constructing-truth-the-fbis-nonrecording-policy/#3aa088e12e8a
https://www.nysun.com/national/james-q-wilson-offers-warning-on-mueller-co/90356/
“The best explanation of the firing of FBI director James Comey and of the subsequent investigation by special counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller may just come from a social scientist who died years before President Trump took office.
When James Q. Wilson died in 2012, he was remembered primarily for his influential 1982 Atlantic article with George Kelling, “Broken Windows: The Police And Neighborhood Safety,” advocating police tactics focused on maintaining order and reducing fear.
It turns out, though, that Wilson — whose colleagues in the government department at Harvard included Henry Kissinger and Daniel Patrick Moynihan — also wrote a whole book about the FBI.
That book, The Investigators: Managing FBI And Narcotics Agents, was published in 1978 … It is based on in part on Professor Wilson’s personal experience as an adviser to FBI director Clarence Kelley, who served between 1973 and 1978.
Its insights relevant to Messrs. Comey and Mueller come in a chapter considering the motivation of FBI executives, and of government officials in general. Wilson writes, “In my view, it is the desire for autonomy, and not for large budgets, new powers, or additional employees, that is the dominant motive of public executives.”
What does Wilson mean by “autonomy”? His book explains, “An agency is autonomous to the degree it can act independently of some or all of the groups that have the authority to constrain it.” Autonomy comes “by acquiring sufficient good will and prestige as to make attacks on oneself or one’s agency costly for one’s critics.”
This craving for autonomy applies not only at the executive level but also to front-line investigators, Wilson writes: “A detective wants, above all else, to be left alone and to be backed up.”
For much of its history, Wilson writes, the FBI “enjoyed an almost unparalleled degree of autonomy.” Wilson describes it as “extraordinary autonomy.”
The nice thing about this “autonomy” theory of the FBI is that it potentially explains both the bureau’s leaks about Hillary Clinton in 2016 and its reaction to President Trump in 2017 and 2018.
…
Mr. Mueller’s investigation is being described as a defense of democracy, or as a defense of the rule of law, or as an investigation into possible obstruction of justice or a coverup. After I read Wilson’s book, though, what the Mueller investigation looked like above all was precisely an effort by the FBI to defend its “extraordinary autonomy.”
“Autonomy” of the FBI might have certain advantages. It would prevent politically motivated meddling into criminal investigations, the same way that the “independence” of the Federal Reserve prevents politically motivated interference with interest rates.
A fully autonomous FBI, though, is inconsistent with Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which states, “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Even if FBI directors such as Messrs. Comey or Mueller might prefer to operate without guidance from presidents or without guidance from attorneys general appointed by presidents, such a set-up would render the FBI unaccountable. Governments, the Declaration of Independence says, derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Presidents Obama and Trump were elected. No one elected Comey or Mueller.
Wilson concludes his book with a warning. There have been, he writes, powerful law enforcement agencies in the world that operated without the constraints of political superiors or of public opinion. The record of such authoritarian secret police forces, “judged by the test of human liberty, is not promising.” “
Don’t forget the weasel at DOJ – we talked about him yesterday.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/08/16/bruce-ohr-second-big-cipher-clue-to-russiagate/
http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/16/bruce-ohr-may-broken-law-pushing-wifes-opposition-research-fbi/
What I can’t understand is how Mueller got away with, and the court allowed, first, jailing Manafort–who is, at the worst, just a pretty elderly white collar criminal, and not some young, strong and crazy, violent, feral menace to society–pending the outcome of his trial, but most especially, with putting Manafort in solitary confinement.
How could that be justified?
I’m hoping that if Manfort is acquitted, he can sue the hell out of Mueller personally and his team, as well as the judge in this case for false imprisonment.
I’ve looked up a few political trials and the range seems to be 2 hours to 5.5 hours per count. In this case, that would be 35-100 hours of deliberation, with the chances of acquittal on any given count directly proportional to the time allocation to deliberation. As we speak, it’s up to 29 hours and holding.
In other news, Michael Cohen is due to make a court appearance at 4:00 pm. The tool CNN is employing to cover the courthouse in Alexandria, Va. fancies the Cohen appearance will be a where-were-you-when-you-found-out-Kennedy-was-shot moment.
Snow – Mueller’s treatment of Manafort has been outrageous from the beginning (see numerous reports by Andy McCarthy). If I were on the jury, I would want to know what, indeed, justified those actions, especially compared to the oh-so-careful handling of the malefactors on the other side of the controversy.
* * *
Some more on the players on the main stage, now that Manafort is manifestly just an “off Broadway” aging drama.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/08/21/papadopoulos-told-the-feds-he-received-10000-from-a-foreign-national-he-believed-was-a-spy/
“Buried at the bottom of a court document Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed Friday is a reference to a mysterious $10,000 cash payment given to George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser who has been charged with giving false statements to the FBI.
On the final page of a memo recommending that Papadopoulos serve up to six months in jail, Mueller said that Papadopoulos told investigators about $10,000 in cash that he received from a foreign national who he suspected to be a foreign spy.
…
While Mueller’s court filing makes no other reference to the individual, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned that a man named Charles Tawil gave Papadopoulos $10,000 during a meeting in an Israeli hotel room in July 2017.
Sources familiar with the matter told TheDCNF Tawil flew to the Greek island of Mykonos to meet Papadopoulos and his now-wife, Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos. Tawil invited the pair to Israel, but Mangiante Papadopoulos stayed behind.
Papadopoulos gave the money to an attorney in Greece before traveling back to the U.S., a source told TheDCNF on the condition of anonymity. ”
Told them voluntarily, or after interrogation to make him ‘fess up? Did they already know about the bribe — which it patently was — and was this another Page-like set-up?
* * *
I would pay to see this cage match.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/08/20/brennan-is-threatening-to-sue-over-his-loss-of-clearance-giulianis-reaction-will-make-him-think-twice/
“Former CIA Director John Brennan seemed to promise a lawsuit Sunday after President Donald Trump revoked his security clearance for “erratic conduct and behavior.”
Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, welcomed Brennan’s threat.
…
“We’ll take his deposition right away,” Giuliani said. “As the plaintiff he’d have to go first. I’d volunteer to do that case for the president. I’d love to have Brennan under oath for I don’t know how many days — two, three days? We’ll find out about Brennan.”
Giuliani went on to suggest that he would question Brennan about alleged intelligence failures that took place under his leadership, including the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, a terror attack which killed 19 U.S. servicemen while he was CIA station chief in Riyadh. He also alluded to Brennan’s 1976 vote for the Communist Party USA’s presidential candidate, Gus Hall.”
* * *
I didn’t remember that Brennan was connected with the Khobar disaster.
Going back to the Mudd-slinging, Phil really came unhinged, while Paris Dennard projected a very calm, reasonable demeanor and good arguments (embedded at the end of Dyer’s post below).
This is how you get more Trump.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/08/21/q-e-d-america-cant-talk-about-security-clearances-without-acting-like-a-bunch-of-big-babies/
“I was disappointed in Chris Wallace this weekend (on Fox News Sunday) for characterizing the Brennan security clearance flap as a case of Trump punishing a critic, by wielding the power of the security clearance over him. The implication was that this was a petty and personal move by Trump. The further implication was that it would have an intimidating effect on the speech of those whose priority is to keep their clearances.
(On behalf of thousands of mid-level intelligence professionals past and present, I will insert here one brisk “Boo-fricking-hoo.”) [Dyer being one of those pros herself]
A few pundits have done reasonably well by the topic. But most are missing the mark by focusing on whether it damages Brennan’s marketability on the punditry circuit.
…
Still others have focused on the point that there is monetary value to a departed senior official’s continued access to classified information. This gets at the actual important point, but in most cases falls short of developing it.
So here is the important point. Why in the world should anyone in America retain official access to classified information while being paid to contribute material to a news organization?
What kind of insanity is that? However that practice got started, it should stop immediately. It is ridiculous to suggest that there is anything judicious or sensible about allowing such a situation.
Many departed officials retain their clearances if they are going to move into government consulting jobs, or other jobs with government contractors. That situation may or may not need review, but it’s not the issue here.
The issue is departed officials, whether civil service or military retirees, or appointed officials like Brennan, who retain courtesy clearances because of their seniority, and then hire out to news organizations to be expert commentators.
It takes an idiot to not see that that is blowing the control valve off the pipeline for classified information.
This isn’t about personalities, power moves, or freedom of speech. It’s about a moral hazard the size of this galaxy and the next six all gaggled together, and one to which an end should be put forthwith. ….
You want to comment as a paid consultant on intelligence or national security, with CNN, or NBC, or Fox, or the New York Times or Politico or anyone other media outlet, you should do it without being read in for any current classified access. Yes, it should be just that simple. How foolish to even suggest otherwise.”
* *
One small caveat is that, as we have all been tutored lately, having an active (or even temporarily suspended) clearance is not the same as being “read in” to have access to specific classified data, but apparently the Great Leak Machine doesn’t always pay attention to the niggling details.
It’s a lot easier to justify talking to somebody who is still “cleared” even if not “read in” to the program you want to discuss.
I’m going with “A lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
If Scott Johnson can’t figure out the cases, I have no hope.
This is Papa… not Manafort, but they are analogous in duplicity, opacity, and hypocrisy.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/08/analyze-this-35.php
“Robert Mueller has filed a 10-page sentencing memo in the case of George Papadopolous (embedded below via Scribd). In the revised authorized version of the origin of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign, Papaoplous looms large. He is allegedly the man. Having reviewed the sentencing memo, however, Bryon York concludes that “Papadopoulos emerges as bit player in Trump-Russia affair.” Margot Cleveland explores the perplexities of the sentencing memo in “FBI Reveals It’s Either Lying Or Incompetent.” Cleveland’s column is deeply troubling.
I can’t explain. Trying to understand what is revealed here, I despair that we will ever truly penetrate what emerges ever more clearly as the greatest political scandal in American history.“
More good points from Scott on the left’s obfuscation of the DOJ/FBI cases. His observations are in accord with the Twitter stream by Kim Strassel I linked yesterday: every word in the article is true, and the whole thing is a lie. (see the repeat at the end of this comment)
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/08/ohr-not-2.php
“At the Weekly Standard yesterday Eric Felten blasted the New York Times’s depiction of Bruce Ohr as “a midlevel government worker” and “little-known career Justice Department official.”
Indeed, according to one of the Times’s classic triple-byline stories (concluding with credit to two more reporters), Ohr was a faceless bureaucrat deposited “deep into the government bureaucracy.” In case you missed the Times’s point, the team of three plus two reporters also puts it this way: Ohr is “[a] largely anonymous part of the 113,000-person Justice Department work force.”
Sometimes it takes five Times reporters to obscure the critical facts. The Times’s treatment of Bruce Ohr — the apparent conduit for Christopher Steele to the FBI after the FBI was compelled to terminate its relationship with Steele, as Felten also explains — presents a valuable case study. “Anyone familiar with Washington could be forgiven for assuming that means Ohr is a GS-14, or maybe at most a GS-15,” wrote Felten, “the typical job scale for a midlevel federal careerist. You’d never think from reading the New York Times article that until recently Ohr was one of the most senior officials at Justice Department—associate deputy attorney general.”
Tucker Carlson invited Felten to discuss his column on Fox News last night. Felten commented: “What’s funny is they keep referring to Bruce Ohr as ‘little-known.’ And he is ‘little-known’ if you read the New York Times or the Washington Post, where they don’t tell you about Bruce Ohr.” Exactly.”
* * *
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1030528033411674112.html
Thread by @KimStrassel: “It is never fun to tackle fact checkers, but this one is a case study in that modern art of omitting details, stating unsupportable assertions as fact, slipping things in, manipulating a narrative. Opinion as “fact.” So let’s go through it. ”
Kim thorough fisks the WaPo articles “Who is Bruce Ohr?” and hands out a gazillian Alternative-Pinocchios for their word-smithing — nothing they say is literally untrue, but what they don’t say makes the entire article a lie.
Here’s a PLB commenter with some fact checking on Ohr and the DOJ, and some more just for fun. Somebody later lists the top pecking order of government service, but it was too long:
Bill Shipley
pecking order — i have commented to various reporters to quit referring to Ohr as the “fourth most senior DOJ official.” I think that is the narrative the NYT is fighting against. But it is wrong — early on someone wrote that his office was “four doors away from Sally Yates”, and that got twisted into the fourth most senior report.
But you should not minimize his position. The Deputy AG runs DOJ on a daily basis. All operational components report to the DAG. The Attorney General deals more with policy, WH, Congress, etc.
Bruce Ohr was an “Associate Deputy AG” — typically there are about 10 people with that title in any given administration. They are the senior career staffers in the DAG’s office. They are the DAG’s “eyes and ears” in monitoring the daily operations of the Department. One of the group is the “Principal Associate” — the first among equals. The Associates decide what issues they can resolve, and what issues need to go to the DAG to resolve. They deal with conflicts between DOJ components — when DEA and FBI disagree on how to pursue a joint investigation, the Associate DAG solves the problem. Ohr was one of those 10 people. Very very senior — but a career employee, not a political appointee.
* * *
Of course, I think he was a VERY political appointee (as do some of the commenters who work in the gubmint).
* * *
This is just funny, I don’t care who you are.
John M Asquith
I am reminded of a recent internet meme with a closeup of a cat’s ears. In it they explained that a cat has 32 muscles in its ears which makes it capable of ignoring us at will. Indeed it will take more and more reporters to obscure the truth of the FBI’s perifidy.
Jeff Johnson
Perhaps the Times secretly agrees with Trump and Guiliani, that sometimes the truth isn’t the truth. They just have to work really hard to obscure it.
Galen Mcbride
Faith, you’re almost correct. Current DCIA is a career Agency employee, and Brennan was a career CIA employee. Current DDCIA is a former career employee.
When the political appointees are political, that’s pretty much dog-bites-man. When the careerists – when they ascend to the top, but more importantly when they are senior but not political appointees like Ohr – are political, that is the essence of the “Deep State.”
* * *
Robert Shotzberger
The Times knows little.
Ron Kean
What they know may be a different story. The Times wants their readers to know little.
* * *
Todd Seibt
Former reporter here, 25 years in the biz.
Whenever you see more than two bylines, you are reading a blenderized mess, that also had at least three editors chopping the facts into very fine pieces and putting in their two cents worth, even if their worth was less than two cents.
In addition, all of the reporters most likely did not work the same shifts or days, so they never sat down and actually compared their notes. And with no one in charge, no one followed up on the gaping holes in the story.
Walk — no, run! — away from such stories.
…
In a multiple-byline story, there is no accountability.
* * *
Kenneth Felton
How many media poodles does it take to screw in a llight bulb?
Five, but they still don’t know how to turn it on.
* * *
David Stevens
The same paper that filed a FOIA request to get at the municipal emails of Bret Kavenaugh’s wife, to you know, provide the full story, needs 5 reporters to dismiss even questioning the glaring connection between Ohr and Fusion GPS, where HIS wife worked?
They not only not question it but put out a piece to discourage others who might. Only fear of what might be revealed could motivate the creation of this dodgy article. It certainly ain’t journalism.
* * *
Indeed.
Don’t miss this one by Mark Penn at The Hill, on whether Mueller can even be doing what he’s doing.
http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/402583-only-courts-can-rein-in-king-rosenstein
Wow, here’s an article actually about the Manafort trial —
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/402837-manafort-jury-asks-what-happens-if-they-cant-come-to-conclusion-on-a-count
“Manafort’s lead attorney Kevin Downing objected to Ellis’s decision not to provide a new verdict form with a third option of “hung” for each count.
He said the jurors shouldn’t be misled to think a hung jury at the end of this trial isn’t appropriate.
If the jurors fail to reach a consensus, Ellis told Downing he would “consider accepting what they reach.”
He brought the jury back into the courtroom at 10 minutes to noon and instructed them to try to reach a unanimous verdict. Ellis told them if they fail to agree, the case is left open and undecided.
In the instructions he read, he said the jurors should not hesitate to re-examine their views and change their decision if they think it’s erroneous.
“In conferring together, each of you should pay attention and respect the views of the other,” he said.
Ellis reminded the jury it is their duty to agree on a verdict if they can do so without violating their individual conscience.
The jury is in their fourth day of deliberations in the trial, the first test in court for special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of prosecutors.
Ellis also lightly scolded the press, asking them not to disrupt the proceedings by running out of the room with breaking news. He said the reporters could run in and out of the overflow courtroom three floors below as much as they please.
After those remarks, the court marshal prevented any other reporters from leaving the room until the proceedings were adjourned.”
Another peripheral player – why isn’t Mueller ready to proceed in the oldest case that he’s prosecuted? Still looking for Flynn to “suddenly remember” something he hasn’t told them before?
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/402861-flynn-sentencing-hearing-delayed
“Special counsel Robert Mueller has again delayed scheduling a sentencing hearing for former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
“Due to the status of its investigation, the Special Counsel’s Office does not believe that this matter is ready to be scheduled for a sentencing hearing at this time,” read a joint status report released Tuesday.
Tuesday’s delay is the fourth time prosecutors have asked to delay Flynn’s sentencing.
…
As an element of his guilty plea, Flynn has been cooperating with Mueller’s team in its ongoing investigation of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.”
The judge will be polling the jury shortly. Supposedly, if he’s satisfied they are hopelessly deadlocked on the counts on which they haven’t come to a decision, he’ll declare a mistrial on those counts and read the verdict on the counts on which they did make a decision. Supposedly, they’ve deadlocked on 10 counts and reached a verdict on 8.
The control over information and it’s dissemination is everything.
How do any of us–if not present at the incident itself, in it’s entirety–ever know for sure what happened, who was there, what their demeanor was, what they said and/or did, or what the event that happened really and fully consisted of?
How are we to know if something of key importance is being hidden from us, and just not reported on? Can we ever be sure that the MSM has just not collectively turned it’s head away from something they just don’t want to see, or us to know?
If we don’t have all of the background information–the real, true, actual, objective, and complete facts–how can we sort the truly significant from what is not of any real significance and consequence? Spend our time thinking about and dealing with the mountain, and not the molehill.
Which one of us can know with certainty–if not intimately involved in something–if some key piece of information is missing, or if some key document has either been withheld, has been tampered with, or is being willfully misinterpreted?
Here is where an objective, honest, and thorough Press–reporting things “without fear or favor,” as they used to say– is so critically important, and today’s Press is neither objective, nor honest, nor thorough.
As long as the Left and their servants the MSM control the “narrative,” we will never be fully sure that we are being told, “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” about anything, much less things of great significance and consequence.
Mistrial on 10 counts
Guilty on 8 counts: 1 of hiding foreign bank accounts, 2 of defrauding lenders, and 5 of tax evasion.
Snow on Pine on August 21, 2018 at 4:37 pm at 4:37 pm said:
The control over information and it’s dissemination is everything.
* *
Good essay.
I have faced this same problem in my own family, with two of them wanting me to come down on who I will side with about a conversation they had to which I was not a party.
Both of them believe they are telling “the real truth” about what was said.
Yesterday I said to some friends I predict one or two guilty verdicts. I guess I was a little low, but still, the majority of counts were mistrialed. I doubt that there will be another trial, and I’m sure that Manafort will appeal.
So, does this mean that Manafort will be released from the “hole” pending his appeal?
No. The DC judge is a cat’s paw of Mueller.
If I were a commentator on FOX, say, I’d be making comparisons with the Dreyfus Affair, saying that being a Trump Administration employee/supporter–in today’s hyper partisan political atmosphere–is the equivalent of being a Jew in 1894, during the Third French Republic, with the malevolent animus being at the same level, as is the same level of railroading.
Snow — I hadn’t thought of it before, but there really are a lot of parallels in the cases of Dreyfus and Russia-gate.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/life_of_emile_zola/
The review that I most agree with says this:
“In 1862, Emile Zola(Paul Muni) and his friend Paul Cezanne(Vladimir Sokoloff) are a pair of starving and freezing artists trying to survive in Paris. Even a regular job in a bookstore does not last long for Zola. What does change Zola’s fortunes is an opportune encounter with Nana(Edna O’Brien Moore) after they save her from arrest by the police. After which, she relays her story of woe which inspires Zola to write a novel. That turns out to be the first of many bestsellers for him and the beginning of a very comfortable life. And then there is the case of Alfred Dreyfus(Joseph Schildkraut). Despite its title, “The Life of Emile Zola” is really not a biopic. Rather, its first thirty minutes about Zola’s rise to fame just serves as a prelude to its take on the Alfred Dreyfus case which might have been still controversial at the time this was made. As such, this movie makes an excellent case for the role of the artist in society being a socially conscious one to which it provides a prime example. That comes complete with rousing speeches, very good performances and crowd scenes which Shakespeare would be proud of.”
He leaves off the point that Zola struggled a long time before writing his accusation of the injustice against Dreyfus, and was so vilified (and prosecuted) by the populace, media, government, and military that he had to move to England (giving up a lot of that comfort and public acclaim) until he (and Dreyfus) were finally vindicated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair
“The Dreyfus Affair (French: l’affaire Dreyfus, pronounced [la.f?? d??.fys]) was a political scandal that divided the Third French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. The affair is often seen as a modern and universal symbol of injustice,[1] and it remains one of the most notable examples of a complex miscarriage of justice and antisemitism The major role played by the press and public opinion proved influential in the lasting social conflict..
The scandal began in December 1894 with the treason conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young Alsatian French artillery officer of Jewish descent. Sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, Dreyfus was imprisoned on Devil’s Island in French Guiana, where he spent nearly five years.
Evidence came to light in 1896—primarily through an investigation instigated by Georges Picquart, head of counter-espionage—identifying a French Army major named Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy as the real culprit. After high-ranking military officials suppressed the new evidence, a military court unanimously acquitted Esterhazy after a trial lasting only two days. The Army then accused Dreyfus with additional charges based on falsified documents. Word of the military court’s framing of Dreyfus and of an attempted cover-up began to spread, chiefly owing to J‘accuse…!, a vehement open letter published in a Paris newspaper in January 1898 by writer Émile Zola. Activists put pressure on the government to reopen the case.
In 1899, Dreyfus was returned to France for another trial. …The new trial resulted in another conviction and a 10-year sentence, but Dreyfus was given a pardon and set free. Eventually all the accusations against Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless. In 1906 Dreyfus was exonerated and reinstated as a major in the French Army. He served during the whole of World War I, ending his service with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He died in 1935.
The affair from 1894 to 1906 divided France deeply and lastingly into two opposing camps: the pro-Army, mostly Catholic “anti-Dreyfusards” and the anticlerical, pro-republican Dreyfusards. It embittered French politics and encouraged radicalization.”
After the publication of J’Accuse:
“General Billot, Minister of War, filed a complaint against Zola and Alexandre Perrenx, the manager of L’Aurore, to be heard at the Assises of the Seine from 7 to 23 February 1898. Defamation of a public authority was liable to trial in the Cour d’Assises, while insults to private figures—such as journalists and intellectuals—uttered by the nationalist and antisemitic press were limited to the civil adversarial system. (The taxpayer is at risk in the first case, while only the plaintiff is at risk in the second.) The minister referred to only three passages of Zola’s article,[140] eighteen lines out of hundreds. He accused Zola of having written that the court martial had committed “unlawful acts […] by order”.[141] The trial opened in an atmosphere of extreme violence—Zola had been the object of “the most shameful attacks”[Note 29] as well as important support and congratulations.[Note 30]
Fernand Labori, Zola’s lawyer, intended to call about 200 witnesses. The details of the Dreyfus Affair, unknown to most of the public, were published in the press. Several papers[Note 31] published shorthand notes verbatim of the debates every day to build support in the population. These notes were, for the Dreyfusards, an essential tool for later debates. The nationalists, behind Henri Rochefort, however, were more visible and organized riots, which forced the prefect of police to intervene to protect Zola whenever he left the facility[142] after every hearing.[143]
This trial was also the scene of a real legal battle in which the rights of the defence were constantly violated.[144] Many observers were aware of the collusion between France’s political and military worlds. Evidently the court received instructions not to raise the subject of former judicial errors. President Delegorgue, on the pretext of the long duration of the hearings, juggled the law incessantly to ensure that the trial dealt only with the alleged defamation by Zola. Delegorgue’s phrase “the question will not be put” was repeated dozens of times.[145].
Zola was sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of 3,000 francs,[Note 32] which was the maximum penalty. This harshness was due to the atmosphere of violence surrounding the trial. “The excitement of the audience and the exasperation of the crowd in front of the courthouse were so violent that one could fear the worst excesses if the jury acquitted Mr. Zola”.[147] However, the Zola trial was rather a victory for the Dreyfusards.[148] Indeed, the affair and its contradictions had been widely discussed throughout the trial, especially by the military. In addition, the violent attacks against Zola and the injustice of the conviction of Dreyfus reinforced the commitment of the Dreyfusards. … Even more than the Dreyfus Affair the Zola affair resulted in a regrouping of intellectual forces into two opposing camps.
On 2 April 1898 an application to the Supreme Court received a favourable response. This was the court’s first intervention in the affair. The military court made the complaint, rather than the minister. Prosecutor-General Manau supported a review of the Dreyfus trial and strongly opposed the anti-Semites. The judges of the military court, whom Zola had challenged, sued him for libel. The case was brought before the Assizes of Seine-et-Oise in Versailles where the public was considered more favourable to the army and more nationalistic. On 23 May 1898, at the first hearing, Mr. Labori appealed to the Supreme Court regarding the change of jurisdiction, which adjourned the trial and postponed the hearing to 18 July 1898. Labori advised Zola to leave France for England before the end of the trial, which the writer did, departing for a one-year exile in England. The defendants were convicted again. As for Colonel Picquart, he found himself again in prison.
Henry unmasked, the case is rekindled
The acquittal of Esterhazy, the convictions of Émile Zola and of Georges Picquart, and the continued presence of an innocent man in prison had a considerable national and international effect.[151] France was exposed as an arbitrary state, which contradicted its founding republican principles. Anti-Semitism made considerable progress and riots were common throughout the year 1898. However politicians were still in denial about the affair. In April and May 1898, they were mostly concerned with elections, “
“plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”
And they say there aren’t two systems of “justice,” and that equal treatment and equal justice under the law still prevails.
Compare and contrast with the treatment given to Paul Manafort–
Today also comes the news that, despite multiple reports of a a ton of extremely suspicious activities that point to the unauthorized penetration and hacking of the computers of dozens of Democrat members of the House of Representatives, a judge in DC has sentenced former Democrat Computer IT administrator, Pakistani Imran Awan, formerly very close to Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to no jail time, no fines for his admitted bank fraud, and just three months of supervised community service as his punishment.
Since Awan was not charged for any of his other very suspicious activities involving Congress, not tried for bank fraud, but for a bargained down charge of merely lying on a loan application, this allowed prosecutors to sweep this whole much more important and consequential Congressional computer scandal under the rug.
In imposing her less than nothing sentence, the Obama appointed judge even went so far as to say that Awan had, in fact, been persecuted, and had “suffered enough.”
Snow – in re Awan and the DNC in general – people looking for treason are overlooking the obvious in favor of the chimerical.