[Request for opinions and guidance from lawyers and especially ones working in New York State toward the bottom of this post.]

Let me share a few thoughts and tips on the new Manafort charges from Manhattan, DA Cy Vance, Jr. They are twofold. Prosecutors I’ve spoken to seem close to unanimous that the indictments appear poorly drafted. Perhaps this is just the first bite at the apple and they’ll be revised or tightened. I don’t know. But related to that and likely more important: at least some of those with experience in New York State are skeptical whether at least some of these charges will survive New York State’s double jeopardy statute. Read More

If I understand this story correctly, Port Richey, Florida just had its second mayor arrested in the last three weeks. The first wasn’t your standard mayoral arrest. Mayor Dale Massad was arrested when he opened fire on a SWAT team that had come to arrest him on charges of practicing medicine out of his home without a license. Sheriff Chris Nocco said Massad was a violent drug user who kept a stash of weapons in his home, had had previous run-ins with the law and lost his medical license 25 years ago after a three year old patient died. Read More

Catch up on the Cindy Yang story and the rush of white supremacist and neo-nazi news in my conversation with Allegra Kirkland, Josh Kovensky and David Taintor. You can listen here.

Paul Manafort’s sentencing hearing is about to resume. We should hear the sentence shortly. Live coverage here.

Tierney Sneed is liveblogging Paul Manafort’s sentencing hearing this morning in Washington, DC. Watch it here.

Over the last few days, as part of his continued attacks on Jewish Democrats, President Trump has insisted that American Jews are streaming out of the Democratic party. We have a century of statistics on these issues. In fact, the exact opposite is happening. In 2012, 2016 and 2018 the percentage of Jews voting for Democrats has gone up in each cycle, from 69% in 2012 to 79% in last November. But I thought this was a good opportunity to look at Jewish voting demographics in the context of the increasing racialization of voting in general.

Here is the breakdown going back to 2008. I haven’t included midterms except for the most recent election. Exit polls aren’t the only or necessarily the best way to count vote breakdowns for ethnicity and race. But they’re a good broad indicator. And they provide good baselines of comparison. Read More

Paul Manafort is scheduled to be sentenced at 9:30 a.m. ET. This is the DC case, separate from the Virginia case he was sentenced in last week. TPM’s Tierney Sneed is at the courthouse and will be bringing the proceedings to you in real time. You can find her here.

My favorite part of Allegra Kirkland’s run-down (P) of the Ricketts family’s other problems hanging out with racists and white nationalists is when she notes that family patriarch Joe Ricketts has some very bigoted views on Muslims and Barack Obama, as revealed in some earlier leaked communications. Son Pete Rickets is the one who we found out yesterday had an anti-Semite and white supremacist on his campaign staff. But in fairness, she notes, when son Pete found out about father Joe’s backward and bigoted views he did send his dad a Snopes article debunking stereotypes about Muslims.

For almost two decades I’ve told you about the importance of your emails. We want your feedback, your commentary, your criticisms. But there’s really nothing we want more than your tips. People tend to focus on secret information, sometimes super secret information that people can lose their jobs or even lives over. If you’ve got something like that by all means contact us for a secure channel to send us the information. But most tips are far more prosaic. They’re not even really secret at all. Matt Shuham has a quick note here about how a TPM Reader tipped us off to a Virginia congressman deceiving his constituents about how he voted on Trump’s emergency declaration. Read More

Very nice piece of sleuthing here from Josh Kovensky: Cindy Yang, the massage parlor baron at the center of the Mar-a-Lago pay to pay story also hawks EB-5 visas, the ones that allow you to buy a green card for making certain investments in the US.