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Prediction: Manafort will walk with less than 6 months, and less than a week’s wages for him…
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Manfort knows whether Trump knew about the russia meeting - he was there, and he was campaign chair at the time. My bet is he didn’t piss without Donny knowing about it. If he gives trump up on this the president will be facing criminal conspiracy charges.
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Good question. Maybe early on they thought they could make a better case? Maybe he wants the facts on the record, maybe for some reason related to the larger Mueller investigation?
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A hung jury might be the best of all possible outcomes for his Russian handlers.
Even if Mueller is able to gain a conviction with a retrial, the resulting verdict would have even less credibility among ⊥rump’s base than a guilty verdict from the first trial.
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Whaaa?
Oughtn’t that be “Nattering Nabobs of Negativity seem to be forgetting…?”
(Also no possessive apostrophe—curse them! They slip in so easily! 
)
"They slip in so easily! "
Yes, yes… that’s what she said…
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Isn’t accepting a pardon an admission of guilt? I feel like we went over this with the whole racist sheriff concentration camp guy.
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Repeat after me: “Impeachment is a political process, not a criminal one”.
There’s no rule saying a sitting POTUS needs to be impeached to be charged. Because it doesn’t make any sense.
Many other positions require an impeachment for removal from office - federal judges, for example. If a federal judge drives drunk, they can still get arrested and jailed. For example, Judge Astacio didn’t get removed as a judge for two years after her DUI, which included prison time.
Just because there’s no direct precedent for it doesn’t mean that the rules are unclear - there’s no rule saying the POTUS has immunity from crimes, so he or she doesn’t have immunity, by definition. Anyone saying anything about “Presidential immunity” other than “it doesn’t exist in any way, shape, or form” is an idiot.
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This is only the first trial. This is the financial crimes trial that just covers stuff like bank fraud and defrauding the IRS.
The NEXT one is the juicy one, which will include all the “acting as an unregistered foreign agent” and pesky “money laundering” stuff.
TBH, he probably just withdrew from defense so he’d still have some money left to fight the big battle, and doesn’t want to say a damn thing he doesn’t have to in this trial (which is pretty much just $-penalties) that might be useful in the next. Smart of the prosecutors to split it up for a lot of reasons, not least of which to already have a guilty verdict against him, and to let him freak out a little while they confiscate all his money… And so he can’t use any of those funds to defend himself in the next round, either.
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Riding the bus in D.C.
KA-THUNK
“Did you just feel the bus run over something?”
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Maybe we’re over thinking it.
Breitbart isn’t covering this; it’s the usual schtick of burying it in the AP news feed.
It has to be very bad for Trump.
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This isn’t super unusual:
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It’s an admission of guilt if given before a trial or sentencing for sure. It’s a blatant denial of the facts.
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Yeah, I was just reading some more… Seems like the Manafort lawyers’ only strategy was to come up with procedural objections and they failed at every turn.
They actually argued that Manafort’s fraudulent disclosures on a loan application did not lead to the loan because the bank officer who awarded it was actually looking for a Trump administration appointment… So the fraud didn’t matter because the officer knew about it but didn’t care since an implicit bribe was on offer. It’s insane.
So you’re probably right, it’s just basic incompetence. They probably knew he was cooked, but shot the moon anyway. Why he didn’t take a plea deal though is the big question…
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This story is also buried in my newsfeed; overshadowed by the BS 45/Onee drama, so I tend to agree.
I think the portents here are very bad for the Orange Menace…
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Well, his lawyers certainly do seem to be resting.
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The fix is in.
You have to be found guilty to be pardoned. This is step one.
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I wonder. At this point, Trump’s pardons are admissions of Trump’s guilt. We know that he will gleefully throw anyone under the bus, and the pardon is only there to encourage his other confederates to stay silent.
But that only works for federal crimes. The states will start charging these people, which means the pardons are basically worse than nothing, from Trump’s point of view:
- They provide no substantive protection to Trump’s co-conspirators since they will just get jailed for something outside of the federal jurisdiction;
- Therefore they provide no substantive protection to Trump, because people will talk anyway, and
- Simultaneously, they implicate Trump himself by admitting the guilt of the people who are directly connected to him.
Rationally, he might just stop bothering with them.
Then again, all of the above assumes Trump will rationally analyze the situation, which he won’t.
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There’s no good outcome for Manafort in this, none; just varying degrees of horrible:
If the jury doesn’t convict him on these particular charges, he’s still open to state charges and that puts an uncomfortable spotlight on the jurors, and suspected juror tampering.
If they do convict and 45 pardons Manafort, that still leaves him open to state charges and strips away any 5th amendment protections.
If they convict and 45 deigns not to pardon him, Manafort goes to jail sooner rather than later.
This is only the first trial.
And no matter what happens, there are always the Russian handlers that Manafort presumably has to answer to.
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