Everything That's Wrong With Justice In America (w/Updates)

Update: once again, glad to see everyone visiting from Mike's Blog Round Up at Crooks & Liars, thanks again Batocchio! By the by, in terms of updating we should be getting Manafort's second sentence hearing in front of Judge Jackson today, so keep an eye on this site for further updates that are below!

So, still reeling a bit from the ruling last week by one of the judges overseeing Paul Manafort's fate. The immediate reaction I and others following the trial(s) of Manafort's crimes had when we heard Judge Ellis' sentencing the convicted felon to 47 months (with 9 months accrued meaning an even shorter sentence) fell between "stunned" and "outraged."

It's taken a day or two to recover from the anger of what seems an unjust ruling - that Manafort, found guilty of bank fraud and other frauds to the tune of millions of dollars was getting a shorter sentence than people getting 20 years for possessing a $20 bag of pot - to try and gain a better perspective.

At best, I can point to Ken White's take at the Atlantic. He's broken down the reactions to Manafort's light punishment from Ellis into six coherent arguments. I am going to add my own thoughts to each:

First, there can’t be a sentence without an investigation. After 9/11, the United States Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s Offices that it controls shifted resources and focus from white-collar crime to drugs, guns, and immigration. In Los Angeles, the U.S. Attorney’s Office shuttered the Public Corruption and Government Fraud Section, where I served. Investigations of people like Manafort—people who have committed complex financial crimes—are time-consuming and resource-intensive. You can jail 20 drug traffickers for life with the resources it took to prosecute Manafort. America picks who goes to jail when it picks whom to investigate—which is one of the reasons so few people involved in the 2008 Wall Street debacle went to jail.

This is key. Our legal system has a finite amount of resources. It would be pretty to think every crook and questionable act can be investigated, but there's only so much our law enforcement can do at one time. I would note that we could well have chosen to investigate white collar crimes - acts of fraud that ruin thousands and cost billions (not even millions anymore) - but the lack of manpower (and lack of willpower) restricts such investigations. It's in that kind of environment the high-level crooks can raid and pillage with impunity (and kinda explains why a con artist like trump kept avoiding criminal investigations into fraud until now)...

Second, prosecutors have enormous power over who goes to jail and for how long. That power doesn’t just involve deciding who gets indicted. It involves deciding how he gets indicted. Manafort faced a recommended sentencing range of 19 to 24 years under U.S. sentencing guidelines. But that range was driven only in part by what he actually did. It was driven just as much by how the special counsel’s office chose to pursue the case—what charges it brought, what evidence it presented to Ellis, and what part of Manafort’s history it cited as “relevant conduct” at sentencing...

Manafort had committed a lot of questionable acts, but prosecutors only charged him on things they could prove in a courtroom. And even then, a jury has to accept the prosecutors' arguments (Manafort's jury in his first trial found him guilty on 8 charges out of 18, and one juror held out on the remaining 10). This is, as a side note, one of the reasons why prosecutors overcharge suspects in order to force plea deals...

Third, Congress has given Ellis the power to give people like Manafort a break, but has denied him that power when the defendant is accused of many blue-collar crimes. Last year, Ellis sentenced a 37-year-old man named Frederick Turner to 40 years in federal prison for methamphetamine distribution. He had no choice: Congress passed laws making 40 years the mandatory minimum sentence...

This is one of the points where the system itself is insane and broken: The mandatory minimums set by legislators - often pursuing their "tough on crime" and "war on drugs" election campaigns - make it difficult for judges to apply sentences that would be truthfully just. Even Ellis complained about the severity of jail time he was inflicting on Turner, and in Manafort's case where no mandatory time was required Ellis could well have wanted a more lenient punishment (the problem is Ellis is offering mercy to someone who hadn't earned it).

As White notes, there is a genuine legal distinction between what we call "Blue-Collar Crimes" - crimes committed by the poor such as robbery, burglary, drug dealing, acts of violence - and "White-Collar Crimes" - crimes committed by the wealthy or connected such as bribery, tax evasion, money laundering for drug dealers, and acts of fraud - to where we have essentially two legal systems. One for the poor and one for the rich. Guess which one profits Manafort?

Fourth, the U.S. sentencing guidelines treat some crimes more harshly than others, and though, unlike mandatory minimums, they are only recommendations, not strictures, they strongly influence judges. USA Today reported that fraud cases in Ellis’s district yielded an average sentence of 36 months, versus 66 months for firearms charges and 84 months for drug charges, all higher than the national average. Ellis announced that he was sentencing Manafort below the recommended guideline range because that range was far above what defendants received in similar cases. That is, in fact, a factor that he’s required by law to consider. Manafort’s case was arguably much more serious than others, but there’s no question that his sentencing range was atypically high for a white-collar defendant... 

This is the point where Ellis' ruling gets to be a joke. Ellis went and compared Manafort's fate to other white-collar criminals and deemed the prosecutors' recommended sentencing "too harsh". Nevermind the unique circumstances that Manafort is in, or the scale of severity Manafort's crimes are at. All Ellis is seeing is a first-time offender in his court and has decided that Manafort's "blameless life" didn't deserve any worse than the 19 1/2 years being recommended.

To quote another commentator from the Atlantic - Franklin Foer - about Judge Ellis' tone-deaf understanding, about how he looked at a decades-long criminal and still saw "a blameless life":

In an otherwise blameless life, Paul Manafort lobbied on behalf of the tobacco industry and wangled millions in tax breaks for corporations...

In an otherwise blameless life, he worked to keep arms flowing to the Angolan generalissimo Jonas Savimbi, a monstrous leader bankrolled by the apartheid government in South Africa. While Manafort helped portray his client as an anti-communist “freedom fighter,” Savimbi’s army planted millions of land mines in peasant fields, resulting in 15,000 amputees...

In an otherwise blameless life, Manafort was kicked out of the lobbying firm he co-founded, accused of inflating his expenses and cutting his partners out of deals...

In an otherwise blameless life, he spent a decade as the chief political adviser to a clique of former gangsters in Ukraine. This clique hoped to capture control of the state so that it could enrich itself with government contracts and privatization agreements. This was a group closely allied with the Kremlin, and Manafort masterminded its rise to power—thereby enabling Ukraine’s slide into Vladimir Putin’s orbit...

In an otherwise blameless life, he produced a public-relations campaign to convince Washington that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was acting within his democratic rights and duties when he imprisoned his most compelling rival for power...

In an otherwise blameless life, he stood mute as Yanukovych’s police killed 130 protesters in the Maidan...

In an otherwise blameless life, he tried to use his perch atop the Trump campaign to help salvage his sorry financial situation. He installed one of his protégés as the head of the pro-Trump super PAC Rebuilding America. His friend allegedly funneled $125,000 from the super PAC to pay off one of Manafort’s nagging debts...

In an otherwise blameless life, Manafort was found guilty of tax evasion on an industrial scale. Rather than paying his fair share to help fund national defense and public health, he kept his cash in Cyprus and wired it home to buy more than $1 million in bespoke clothing...

In an otherwise blameless life, he acted with impunity, as if the laws never applied to him. When presented with a chance to show remorse to the court, he couldn’t find that sentiment within his being...

All of those acts - and more - were not sudden, or an impulse, or based on the vagaries of foolish youthful intent. It's all a track record of bad behavior that profited from other people's sufferings without care to fact or rules or human decency.

Ellis is choosing to think of Manafort as a first-time offender rather than someone who had willfully broken and ignored laws, and only got away with it for years all because Manafort lived at a level of society where accountability to the law was merely optional.

Anyway, back to White:

Fifth, money drives cases. Manafort’s criminal defense cost more than most defendants make in a lifetime. Money can’t buy freedom—Manafort’s money couldn’t save him from multiple convictions, because the federal government’s power is overwhelming even to a multimillionaire. But money buys a capable defense with the resources it needs. An extremely experienced, qualified defense team with plenty of time makes a profound difference at every stage of a case. Even when rich people get convicted, money helps get them the best plea deals, the most persuasive sentencing presentations, and often the most lenient sentences.

This is another point where the rich have it easier over the poor in our legal system. People like Manafort can afford lawyers with better resources and better experience while people who can't afford a lawyer have to rely on Public Defenders handling 65-plus cases a month and unable to even get their clients out on bail (meaning a lot of poor people are stewing in the local lockup awaiting trials that are seven months to a year down the road, if ever). Manafort by the by was out on bail before/during the trial, but then got it revoked - by the judge in his other trial, more on that later - when it turned out he was trying to witness-tamper in such a crass manner the judge had no choice but to revoke. Meanwhile, poor defendants can't even that level of mercy. Our cash bond prison system is severely broken...

Sixth, and finally, judges are human. Racism and bias of every sort play a role in the system, but it’s too simplistic to say the problem is that particular judges are racist. The problem is that judges give breaks to people with whom they can identify—people whose humanity they recognize. We’re wired to identify with people like us. Judges—particularly federal judges—tend to come from backgrounds closer to Manafort’s than to the average drug dealer’s. Even when judges are born and raised in poverty, the process of becoming a lawyer, having a career, and becoming a judge makes them inexorably more like Manafort. The system has a homogenizing effect...

Ellis didn't see a globe-spanning criminal ruining thousands of lives, he saw someone who might have been a next-door neighbor at his gated community. This is where the bias of the judge him/herself distorts the need for justice.

Each of White's points are problems we've had with our legal system for some time, decades in fact. And sadly over those decades our legislators who write the laws and the administrators who enforce the laws have done little to balance the scales between rich and poor, against the racism and sexism, towards a truly honest courtroom where there can be "justice for all".

Sending Manafort to prison for barely under 40 months - remember, he's getting reduced for time served - doesn't seem just at all.

The only thing that prevents this from being a total mockery of the law is that Manafort is facing a second courtroom sentencing involving the other crimes he's committed in THAT jurisdiction. He'd already plead out to two conspiracy charges (related to Mueller's Russian investigations) in Judge Jackson's court... but he's also pulled off a lot of dumb stunts in her courtroom to where she's not going to show him any favor at all (she is also the presiding judge of Roger "Can't Keep My Mouth Shut" Stone, and she's already had enough of his BS as is).

There is hope that Manafort will still face stronger justice for his sins.

But in the meantime, Manafort's current leniency - to where it felt like he's getting a "Get Out of Jail Free" deal - exposes a broken American legal system in worse shape than our own bridges and highways.

Everything needs fixing, America. What the hell.

Revisions to the Update (3/13/19): Welp. Judge Jackson read him the riot act... and still only added 73 months on the two counts Manafort plead to... and made 30 of those months concurrent (same time) as his existing sentence... so he's looking at a total of 7.5 years for all the crap he's pulled for two decades. Gangbangers, seriously. Stop dealing drugs and getting life sentences on that. Get into the white-collar shit that Manafort does and get out of jail in less than a decade!!!

Followup to the Revisions to the Update (ten minutes later): The New York DA - think Jack McCoy from Law & Order, except 80 percent more real and 90 percent more pissed off - dropped grand jury charges (16 of them) on Manafort for state-level crimes. Separate from the crap Manafort was charged with at the federal level - avoiding double jeopardy issues - these are still tied into a lot of the financial crimes that Manafort committed. Meaning if trump pardons him NOW for the federal prison time, Manafort can't claim Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination. Essentially, trump can't save his buddy from these charges.

This had to have been a land-speed record by the legal system. The DA probably wanted to make sure he could do this before trump had time to break out his pen.

Additional Followup to the Followup to the Revisions (June 2021): Well dammit, this missed my notice but back in February 2021 the New York Supreme Court said the New York DA couldn't file those charges. Apparently, they did incur double jeopardy. Since trump pardoned Manafort towards the end of his term, this means Manafort walks away from answering for his years of fraud.

/headdesk

Unavoidable Conclusions To an Ongoing Train Wreck

Welcome to the Darkest Timeline (via Ken White at The Atlantic).

Federal prosecutors filed three briefs late on Friday portending grave danger for three men: the former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, the former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, and President Donald Trump...

In brief No. 1, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office argues that Paul Manafort breached his cooperation agreement with the government by lying to the FBI and the Special Counsel’s Office in the course of 12 meetings. The brief oozes a level of confidence notable even among professionally hubristic prosecutors: Mueller says he’s ready to present witnesses and documents, and that he gave Manafort’s lawyers an opportunity to refute the evidence but they could not. Mueller is sure he has the receipts.

According to the brief, Manafort lied about his communications with the reputed Russian intelligence agent Konstantin Kilimnik, whom Mueller has scrutinized as a possible conduit between the Trump campaign and the Russian government... Mueller also asserts that Manafort lied about some of the payments he received and about an investigation in another district—possibly, based on the context, the Southern District of New York investigation of Michael Cohen and the president. Finally, and of great concern to the White House, Mueller claims that Manafort lied about his contacts with the Trump administration before his guilty plea, and that text messages, documents, and witnesses prove that he was in contact with administration officials...

In brief No. 2, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York asks a federal judge to sentence the former Trump attorney Michael Cohen to a “substantial term of imprisonment”—meaning between three and four years...

The New York prosecutors blast Cohen’s “rose-colored view of the seriousness of his crimes,” accusing him of a “pattern of deception that permeated his professional life.” Prosecutors portray Cohen as stubbornly obstructing his own accountant to cheat at taxes, even refusing to pay for accounting work that raised inconvenient issues he wanted suppressed...  Cohen, they say, schemed to pay for two women’s stories (Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, we now know) in violation of campaign-finance laws in order to influence the 2016 election, and did so “in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1”—that is, the President of the United States...

And that brings us to brief No. 3: Special Counsel Mueller’s separate sentencing brief in Cohen’s lying-to-Congress case. He does not recommend a sentence but informs the court about the nature of Cohen’s assistance to his office. Mueller discloses that Cohen has “taken significant steps to mitigate his criminal conduct” by pleading guilty to lying to Congress and meeting with the special counsel seven times to discuss his own conduct and other “core topics under investigation.” That includes information about multiple cases of contact between other Trump-campaign officials and the Russian government, and about Cohen’s contact with the White House in 2017 and 2018, suggesting an ongoing inquiry into obstruction of justice...

Just to note, the Obstruction of Justice relates to trump firing James Comey for refusing to stop the investigation on Michael Flynn, a retired general and major trump campaign player who was in deep with Russians already and was tagged as a serious security risk.

Everywhere in this mess of trump scandal, there are Russians. Russian business partners. Russian contacts. Russian handlers and GRU agents. At some point we're going to find red trump hats reading Druzhishche (buddy).

How serious a breach of national integrity is this?

I normally don't quote from Wired magazine, and you wouldn't normally think it would have any political insight to give. But Wired is tied into network security issues - which is where all the Russian hacking/subversion of our national security comes into play - so they would have a reason to comment. Or at least Garrett Graff would:

WE ARE DEEP into the worst case scenarios. But as new sentencing memos for Trump associates Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen make all too clear, the only remaining question is how bad does the actual worst case scenario get...?

A year ago, Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic outlined seven possible scenarios about Trump and Russia, arranged from most innocent to most guilty. Fifth on that list was “Russian Intelligence Actively Penetrated the Trump Campaign—And Trump Knew or Should Have Known,” escalating from there to #6 “Kompromat,” and topping out at the once unimaginable #7, “The President of the United States is a Russian Agent.”

After the latest disclosures, we’re steadily into Scenario #5, and can easily imagine #6...

In fact, what’s remarkable about the once-unthinkable conclusions emerging from the special counsel’s investigation thus far is how, well, normal Russia’s intelligence operation appears to have been as it targeted Trump’s campaign and the 2016 presidential election. What intelligence professionals would call the assessment and recruitment phases seems to have unfolded with almost textbook precision, with few stumbling blocks and plenty of encouragement from the Trump side.

Mueller’s court filings, when coupled with other investigative reporting, paint a picture of how the Russian government, through various trusted-but-deniable intermediaries, conducted a series of “approaches” over the course of the spring of 2016 to determine, as Wittes says, whether “this is a guy you can do business with.”

The answer, from everyone in Trumpland—from Michael Cohen in January 2016, from George Papadopoulos in spring 2016, from Donald Trump, Jr. in June 2016, from Michael Flynn in December 2016—appears to have been an unequivocal “yes.”

Mueller and various reporting have shown that the lieutenants in Trump’s orbit rebuffed precisely zero of the known Russian overtures. In fact, quite the opposite. Each approach was met with enthusiasm, and a request for more.

Given every opportunity, most Trump associates—from Paul Manafort to Donald Trump, Jr. to George Papadopoulos—not only allegedly took every offered meeting, and returned every email or phone call, but appeared to take overt action to encourage further contact. Not once did any of them inform the FBI of the contacts...

What we are uncovering - something I'd long noted and what Graff is highlighting now - is not only a Presidential campaign willing to break election laws but also willing to betray our nation to a foreign power, driven entirely by a lust for everything that foreign power offered them.

I admit to personal bias. I wholeheartedly believe with only the partial evidence shown of Worst Case Scenario #7: trump AS A RUSSIAN AGENT. Straight up treason.

But here's the upsetting thing. Scenario #7 isn't the breaking point. Scenario #5 - where Russians actively infiltrated a Presidential campaign and trump knew/should have known - is just as bad as #7. This is the level where any honest citizen would have stopped and said "No". This is the point where a legal campaign would have drawn a line. ANY foreign intervention into our internal decision-making - our elections - would be tantamount to betraying every American living or dead who stood for our own nation's sovereign status.

trump and his Inner Circle crossed that line. They never said "No," they said "Yes" and repeatedly. They did it with eyes open and arms wide. Violating national security protocols we have in place to prevent foreign meddling, to stop foreign espionage and spying. They propped the door and let every crook in, because they are crooks themselves.

We're openly seeing evidence of Scenario #5 for trump's campaign, and every bit of it points to acts of treason.

And Cohen's revelations point to Russia being involved since the damned PRIMARIES, when trump was kneecapping Republican candidates from Jeb to Rubio to Kasich to Cruz to every other wanna-be who were left whimpering on the sidelines wondering how the hell they were beat. How does it feel, Republicans? HOW DOES IT FEEL TO KNOW YOUR OWN PRIMARY WAS COMPROMISED BY PUTIN?

To quote my boss Betty Cracker at Balloon Juice:

But here’s what matters: If Trump isn’t brought to justice, the United States of America will cease to exist as a sovereign nation. It’s frightening to face that fact, but face it we must because a criminal gang has seized the executive branch. We and our fellow citizens will either root them out, or we’ll pretend accept that this is just how things are now.

Welcome to the Darkest Timeline. Welcome to the Second Civil War, between us and Putin's Puppets.

Get to work saving the United States. STOP trump NOW. STOP THE REPUBLICAN PARTY FROM STEALING THE REST OF US. 'Cause right now, it's not really trump or the Republicans profiting from this crime. It's Putin. And the United States is going to suffer if he wins outright.

Waiting For the Week It All Goes Down

It's been established that federal investigators clamp down on issuing indictments or make public statements about cases that would affect things in the months before an election - which is THE reason James Comey will NEVER be forgiven for that nothingburger of a "But Her Emails" report the week before Nov. 9 2016 - so now that the midterms are over (and Thanksgiving done and did) there's a ton of expectations about Mueller's ongoing special counsel cases surrounding Russia's interference in the 2016 elections.

The buzz is out there that Mueller has been sitting on "dozens" of sealed indictments, with various trump Inner Circle players - Roger Stone, donnie junior himself - reportedly telling their friends they're facing charges. trump himself has been going through noticeable mood swings in public, and had re-upped his attacks on Mueller post-election.

With yesterday's announcement that Mueller is pulling Paul Manafort's plea agreement over the fact that Manafort has continued lying to investigators, we're facing a likely moment for those sealed indictments to go out, linking Manafort's culpability to the people about to get arrested.

An interesting side note is "why did Manafort endanger his plea deal in the first place?" I caught this little tidbit on Twitter:

Quick link to Emptywheel here:

Paulie can’t help himself. According to Mueller’s team, he has kept lying and lying since entering the cooperation agreement.

After signing the plea agreement, Manafort committed federal crimes by lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Special Counsel’s Office on a variety of subject matters, which constitute breaches of the agreement. The government will file a detailed sentencing submission to the Probation Department and the Court in advance of sentencing that sets forth the nature of the defendant’s crimes and lies, including those after signing the plea agreement herein.
As the defendant has breached the plea agreement, there is no reason to delay his sentencing herein.

As I noted back in September, the standard the government has to prove to claim Manafort has breached his agreement is just “good faith,” as compared to preponderance of the evidence with Rick Gates...

Just about the only explanation for Manafort’s actions are that — as I suggested — Trump was happy to have Manafort serve as a mole in Mueller’s investigation.
But Mueller’s team appears to have no doubt that Manafort was lying to them. That means they didn’t really need his testimony, at all. It also means they had no need to keep secrets — they could keep giving Manafort the impression that he was pulling a fast one over the prosecutors, all while reporting misleading information to Trump that he could use to fill out his open book test. Which increases the likelihood that Trump just submitted sworn answers to those questions full of lies...

If Manafort was an attempt to subvert the investigation within, it didn't work. If it did anything, it revealed that Mueller's team has more damaging - and VERIFIABLE - information on hand condemning a lot of players in trump's world. Worse, Mueller's investigators gave trump enough room to condemn himself by likely answering their questionnaire all wrong.

All this means one thing: a lot of people are facing a lot of jail time (unless trump breaks every foundation of the Constitution first). What does this actually mean?

The most likely targets of the indictment will be every person who showed up at the June  9 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Russians and trump's campaign. This is huge: the most direct link of trump's people to a foreign power in discussions to get aid from that foreign power to steal the election.

So who we know was AT the meeting:

Americans
donald trump junior, inner circle family confidant
Jared Kushner, trump's son-in-law and major campaign advisor
Paul Manafort, at the time trump's campaign manager

Russians
Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with Kremlin connections
Irakly Kaveladze, a Georgian-American, under investigation for money laundering
Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist accused of ties to Russian intelligence
Anatoli Samochornov, Vesenlitskaya's translator

Brit
Rob Goldstone, business go-between and media PR for Russian entertainers/ connected figures.

(If anyone noticed anybody hiding behind the coffee cart in the corner, I hope they get named too)

It's unlikely the Russians will see a courtroom in the U.S. but any charges will restrict their ability to travel outside of Russia. So the real damage is going to hit the Americans and the Brit Goldstone (unless he flees jurisdiction, but I doubt the UK government will give him any protection).

While the direct participants are in serious danger, there's a question mark about the people who knew the meeting happened but didn't personally attend. They could be on the hook - under charge of conspiracy, or related charges to any criminal activity that happened because of that meeting - and it may explain the "dozens of indictments" that insiders say are out there.

It would be interesting to see how broad a net Mueller will cast when the indictments go out.

He'd better do it quick, before we get distracted by our Saturnalia decorating and party plans.

August 21 2018: A Day of Great Schadenfruede

In the immortal words of the Hungarian Tourist, MY NIPPLES EXPLODE WITH DELIGHT

Oh, you need context for my schadenfreude. It goes like this:

Right around noontime today word started trickling to Twitter that big things were afoot in New York City regarding trump's "In DEEEEEEEP SH-T" lawyer buddy Michael Cohen. In Virginia, the jurors for the Paul Manafort Bank Fraud trial - not to be confused with the Manafort Campaign Fraud trial scheduled for DC this September! - were sending letters to the judge about their forms for "Guilty/Not Guilty" to see if there was a third option for "We're Stuck". It was less a sign that it was a Hung Jury on all 18 COUNTS Manafort was facing, and more a sign they had decided on some of them and needed confirmation on the ones they could not resolve.

By 3:00 PM EDT, word had gotten out that Cohen was going to plead guilty by 4:00 PM to some of the charges he was facing involving illicit payoffs to women trump had affairs with and was trying to bribe to keep them silent during the 2016 campaign. Referring to Adam L Silverman at Balloon Juice:

According to the reporting, which is changing and updating as new details emerge, Cohen will plead guilty this afternoon to bank fraud, tax fraud, and campaign finance violations. The New York Times is reporting that this will be a straight guilty plea – there is no cooperation agreement at this time...

Granted, it looked like Cohen was going to play the role of a loyal capo and take his prison time for the don. There was/is still wriggle room for him to plead out down the road.

Still, just as that was getting Twitter aflutter, the jurors in the Manafort trial sent another note to the judge around 4:09 PM, let me link to Southpaw's tweet here for this bit:

It looked like the jury - which was not sequestered - saw the Cohen thing happening and they decided "Fuck it, let's make this a double-header and get ourselves home in time for Wheel of Fortune."

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

So while trump's personal lawyer who may literally know where all the bodies are buried was begging for jail time in New York, trump's associate and campaign manager during much of 2016 was found Guilty on eight of eighteen charges relating to Bank Fraud, Tax Fraud, and Ostrich Suits Failing to File Appropriate Paperwork. As someone else on Twitter noted, if they ever make a documentary movie about this day, the filmmakers would have to use a split screen to show both courtrooms at the same time. Like my fave Woodstock, but with more happy people dancing in the background.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Of the two moments, Cohen's is the bigger worry for trump. Manafort's convictions are related to things that barely had anything to do with trump or his campaign: Again, that's in the September trial coming up. All this jury did was establish Manafort is a criminal who could have financial reasons to commit the other crimes the later trial is focusing on.

Cohen, meanwhile, not only has direct dealings with trump for years, he also is confessing that his deals he made to these women happened with trump's knowledge. Yes, trump is not directly named, but the implications are there:

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court Tuesday to eight criminal counts, admitting that "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office" he acted to keep information that would have been harmful to the candidate and the campaign from becoming public during the 2016 election cycle...

Appearing in court on Tuesday, Cohen said of the charge linked to (Playmate Karen) McDougal that it was done "for the principal purpose of influencing the election." Regarding the charge linked to (porn actress Stormy Daniels), Cohen said the money "was later repaid to me by the candidate."

Assistant US Attorney Andrea Griswold said prosecutors would have been prepared to present evidence during a trial that these were so-called hush payments.

"The proof on these counts at trial would establish that these payments were made in order to ensure that each recipient of the payments did not publicize their stories of alleged affairs with the candidate," she said...

The "candidate" is not named, but trump is essentially an unindicted co-conspirator at this point.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHEHAHAHAHAHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHA.

For all of trump's bluster about all of these investigations - Mueller's investigation into trump's ties to Russia and likely Obstruction of Justice trying to protect ally Michael Flynn (already pled Guilty), the federal investigations in Cohen, the state investigations into the corrupt trump Foundation - being JUST A WITCH HUNT, every investigation has proven results in uncovering trump's entire criminal empire (and the interconnected corruption of fellow travelers in the White Collar Crime Industry).

trump can well try to pretend his innocence in all of this, but his ties to each and every guilty person found out brings to light his own twisted, greedy, corrupt ways.

It would be a complete delight to watch all of this unravel, but I still dread this one truth: A wounded and cornered animal can be one of the most dangerous creatures in the world.

trump is getting cornered right now, finding fewer places to hide. he's wounded, losing key allies - seriously, WHO is left that can handle trump's expected attempt for reelection in 2020? - and exposing himself to a world he can't keep lying to every day. The odds of him lashing out have gone UP not down.

trump is getting to the point - maybe already has - where he has nothing to lose by blowing up the whole damn thing.

Hence the schadenfreude. Part of me wants to party forever now, part of me dreads trump's response.

Stay vigilant, peeps. We're not to a safe place yet.

Update On the Update On the Manafort Gates Part of the trump-Russia Scandals

What I wrote yesterday when it looked like Rick Gates was backing out of a plea deal with Mueller's investigations into trump-Russia, which led to Mueller getting one of his grand juries to add 32 more indictments on Gates and Manafort:

I'm kind of surprised Gates bailed on the deal, if he knew in some way Mueller had more of these charges filed away for this moment. Unless Mueller was offering something that involved jail time, or taking away something Gates viewed as personally valuable, all Gates has done from reneging on the deal has been making it more likely a court will find him guilty on something among all the money laundering and fraud he's getting accused of.

There may be only one reason Gates would back off: if he really thinks trump will come in and shut this all down. Scary consideration, which is the only reason why I don't put this in the Schadenfreude column yet.

Okay, time to make this a Schadenfreude article!

The deal is back on (via Vox.com)!

Special counsel Robert Mueller just flipped another former Trump staffer. Rick Gates — Paul Manafort’s longtime junior business partner and a 2016 Trump campaign aide — agreed to a plea deal in Mueller’s investigation Friday afternoon in which he’ll cooperate with the probe.

Gates pleaded to one count of conspiracy against the United States and one count of making false statements to the FBI. In exchange, other charges related to money laundering, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, and making other false statements will be dropped. Here are his statement of offense and plea agreement.

Though Gates pleaded not guilty after he was first indicted last October, he’s increasingly been looking at an expensive legal defense with no end in sight and a potential decades-long prison sentence — particularly since Mueller filed a dizzying new set of tax, financial, and bank fraud charges against him and Manafort just yesterday.

It's like Gates was all "you must be bluffing, I can't take that deal" and Mueller was all "I don't bluff" and then Gates was all "yuh-huh" and Mueller was "here's 32 more counts on your ass" and Gates was then "oh shit" and...

The thing that stands out: Gates agreeing to plea out to a "Conspiracy Against the United States," something that the previous plea deals never had (nearly everyone else pleading out has gone with just "lying to the FBI"). The indictment seems to spell out that the actual charge involves Gates' lied to the government about his foreign business deals... but the word "conspiracy" itself implies that "more than one person was involved in breaking this particular law". Just how many other people were part of this conspiracy?

It's nice to see the word pop up in this investigation. So far, the word of choice had been calling everything trump and Russia did together as "Collusion", which is suspicious but not criminal. "Conspiracy" is criminal, and we can now describe things happening here in trump-World as conspiracy.

The other thing that the Vox article points out, this is a major turning point in the Mueller investigation, because Gates is someone high enough in trump's 2016 campaign to be a key link to a lot of the questionable acts that have been alleged about them and Russia:

After all, Gates worked on the Trump campaign. And unlike cooperator George Papadopoulos, he actually had a high-level job there, which had him work quite closely with the person running the campaign for several months: Manafort.

For instance, there have been recent reports that Mueller is keenly interested in the White House’s story about the June 9, 2016, meeting Donald Trump Jr. arranged with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower for the purpose of getting “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

Gates wasn’t at that meeting — but Manafort was. And if anything inappropriate involving Russian interference with the campaign did happen there, one person Manafort just might tell could be his close friend and business partner of more than a decade, Rick Gates...

It's also important to note that Gates stayed with trump well after Manafort was kicked from the campaign when his own troubling issues went public. Gates can well flip on other trump campaigners on matters that Mueller is uncovering.

So all in all, fun times.

Until trump freaks out and makes another attempt to fire Mueller, or fires Rosenstein, or shuts down the entire FBI, or...

Update On the Manafort Gates Part of the trump-Russia Scandals

Apparently, whatever deal Mueller was trying to get out of Gates fell through. That means Mueller piled on top of the existing charges even more - and more serious - charges (via Vox.com):

A federal grand jury in Virginia approved a new set of charges from special counsel Robert Mueller against former Trump campaign aides Paul Manafort and Rick Gates Thursday afternoon.

Mueller had indicted Manafort and Gates on a combined 12 counts last October in Washington, DC, but he has now assembled a “superseding indictment” with a combined 32 counts of tax, financial, and bank fraud charges against the two men — in Virginia rather than Washington.

Mueller is actually overseeing various grand juries because the scope and size of the investigation into Russia's attack on our 2016 Elections covers a lot of literal ground.

If you want to take a look at the actual paperwork filed, Vox provided a PDF link here.

For Mueller and for the investigation overall, this is further confirmation that there was - IS - a lot of corruption in trump's business world. It'd be nice to see when/if any of that sticks to trump.

I'm kind of surprised Gates bailed on the deal, if he knew in some way Mueller had more of these charges filed away for this moment. Unless Mueller was offering something that involved jail time, or taking away something Gates viewed as personally valuable, all Gates has done from reneging on the deal has been making it more likely a court will find him guilty on something among all the money laundering and fraud he's getting accused of.

There may be only one reason Gates would back off: if he really thinks trump will come in and shut this all down. Scary consideration, which is the only reason why I don't put this in the Schadenfreude column yet.

If You Had Manafort On Your Dead Pool List, Congrats You Win a Firm Handshake

It's Manafort first out the gates... with his business associate/lobbyist Rick Gates alongside him.

If you hadn't heard of Gates much, he's been under investigation as well, just not as noticed by the media. As the Daily Beast notes, Gates is a serious link to Russia.

As Silverman noted at Balloon Juice, which I linked to earlier, it's clear that Mueller is going first after the stuff he can prove in a court of law without any heavy lifting. Manafort's "questionable" business practices - on the radar since 2012 - makes him an easy target to get... and a likely would-be witness willing to flip on others when a good deal is on the table.

It's not the grand slam a lot of Never trumpers was hoping for - if Mueller had indicted Kushner, Flynn, and donnie junior today as well, I would seriously revoke my No Drinking rule and get smashed on the finest whiskey - but it's a solid base hit. The game is on, muthafuckas, and trump is going to be flailing like the wounded shitgibbon that he is.

With thanks to Betty Cracker for this image link: