Week 94: Trump Treats Manafort's Light Sentence Like an Acquittal. For Himself.

[DonViejo]

The president ignores the inconvenient evidence Mueller has already presented of collusion.

By JACK SHAFER March 09, 2019

"Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Donald Trump famously bleated early in his presidency as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the lawyer he expected would shield him from all charges of wrongdoing, began to fail him. Sessions was about to recuse himself from the Justice Department’s dilating probe into the nexus between meddling Russians and the Trump campaign, leaving Trump legally exposed to what became the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation.

Trump’s wish was for a lawyer who would shout and bully all of his foes into silence and win his case in the public court of opinion before charges could be filed, much as the malicious and threatening Cohn had done for him in Manhattan in the 1970s and 1980s. But Cohn, who died in 1986, proved impossible to replicate. Rudy Giuliani, another sort of hard-nosed New York lawyer, eventually took the assignment, but he too failed to deflect Mueller. Trump then replaced Sessions with legal temp Matthew G. Whitaker in November, reportedly asking him to undo the recusal of Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, where some of Trump’s alleged financial misdeeds are being scrutinized. But even after telling associates he would “jump on a grenade” for Trump, Whitaker shirked the suicide assignment.

Absent a reanimated Cohn to do his dirty work, Trump has continued to play the attorney’s part for himself, snarling and snapping at his enemies, exhaling wild lies and menacing accusations into the television ether. Everywhere Trump looks, he finds proof of his exoneration. When Judge T.S. Ellis sentenced former Trump campaign director Paul Manafort to 47 months of jail-time this week, Trump translated the prison term as a personal victory.

“Both the Judge and the lawyer in the Paul Manafort case stated loudly and for the world to hear that there was NO COLLUSION with Russia,” Trump tweeted on Friday. Nice try, Donald, except Mueller has yet to charge Manafort with anything related to collusion. What Judge Ellis said was that Manafort was “not before this court for anything having to do with collusion with the Russian government to influence this election,” which is quite different from clearing him of collusion. It would make as much sense for Trump to say Judge Ellis cleared Manafort of jaywalking. Court-watchers are predicting that a longer sentence awaits Manafort next week when Judge Amy Berman Jackson will award him additional time for the financial crimes he was convicted on. She jailed Manafort for witness-tampering and is considered a tougher sentencer. How will Trump respond? If he doesn’t concoct exoneration, he’ll probably act as if it had never happened.

The absolutism of Trump’s “no collusion” protestations neglect the evidence found in Mueller’s filings, as David Corn of Mother Jones notes in a new piece. In his Cohen sentencing memo, Mueller cites “useful information concerning certain discrete Russia-related matters core to its investigation that he obtained by virtue of his regular contact with [Trump Organization] executives during the campaign.” Mueller doesn’t specify the information, but the “Russia-related matters” might be about the Moscow Trump Tower project whose timetable Trump attempted to fog from sight with his repeated lies about when it had ended. Corn continues his excavation, reminding readers of Trump adviser (and later national security adviser) Michael Flynn’s pre-inauguration talks about Russian sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, talks that he lied to the FBI about.

more
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/03/09/trump-manafort-sentence-225705

[GWC58]

1. I wonder what our Grand Emperor

King Dotard I will say next week when, hopefully, the DC judge brings down the hammer on Piece of (dog) Shit convicted felon Paul Manafort? I hope she gives him 129 months in a maximum security federal correctional facility, preferably in Florence, Colorado. Oh yeah, and conservative to the 47 months he received. 🤔

[Calista241]

2. I'm almost sure he's going to pardon him as soon as Muellers report comes out.

He might just commute his sentence though, like Bush did with Scooter Libby.

[duforsure]

3. If this sentencing was from it being corrupted,

From him or putin or their minions this will just result in them getting exposed more for corruption and serious crimes, and possibly implicate this judge. It would not surprise me either if they were involved in this all along.