We haven’t heard much from the defense during Paul Manafort’s financial crimes trial. Manafort’s lawyers didn’t call any witnesses or present any evidence. Now it’s time for them to make their closing argument. This is when we’ll finally get a sense of their theory of the case, such as it is. Tierney Sneed and Caitlin MacNeal are reporting from the court house. Stay tuned.
When I wrote this post about Trump’s pre-Twitter, 2011-12 video blog I went back and watched a decent number of the mini-episodes. One of the things I watch for in watching these – just can’t help it – is his verbal focus and precision. (Here’s the video series I’m talking about.) Watch video of Trump from twenty years ago and it’s very, very different from the guy you see now. There was some of this in these videos from less than a decade ago. But there was something else that I noticed, something that took me a while to quite put my finger on because it’s the absence of something. Read More
From TPM Reader JO …
Great job by Tierney and Caitlin covering the Manafort trial. Their dispatches were every bit as good as Wapo, and generally better than the NYTimes. In particular, they showed a great touch for identifying the evidence that illustrated the prosecution’s game plan of corroborating Manafort’s knowledge and complicity with a thousand small lies and deceptions. Many news orgs just focused on the “drama” of provacative questions. Tierney and Caitlin recogized the broader patterns.
It would be truly shocking if Manafort is not convicted of many if not most counts. Of course, juries do crazy things, so we know until we know.
Again, fabulous job by the team.
The GOP nominee for Governor in California compares the Holocaust to long lines at the DMV. “You know, I met a Holocaust survivor in Long Beach. He survived concentration camps, and he said this was worse. He’s 90 years old and he had to wait four hours down in Long Beach. Can you imagine that?” Story here.
One of Paul Manafort’s lawyers is anxiously pacing around a hotel lobby. The other is charging his phone. Reporters are sitting around the same hotel or circulating in and out of the courthouse. After a three-week-long period of daily action during Paul Manafort’s financial crimes trial, now the lawyers, reporters and spectators are stuck in Alexandria, Virginia, with nothing to do but wait as the jury deliberates. It could take hours, or it could take days. Read Caitlin MacNeal’s reporter’s notebook (Prime access) with the latest →
The Pentagon announcement: “We originally targeted November 10, 2018 for this event [the parade] but have now agreed to explore opportunities in 2019.”
On its face that’s a postponement. But exploring opportunities next year sounds vague to the point of possibly not even happening at all.
The greatest conceit in public life today is the notion that we don’t already know President Trump is guilty. Guilty of what? Conspiring, by whatever level of directness, with a foreign power to win the Presidency and then continuing to cater to that foreign power either as payback for the assistance or out of fear of being exposed. In other words, collusion, a national betrayal that may break some statute laws but which far transcends them and isn’t in the past but is rather on-going. Read More
A new note from the jury in the Manafort trial. We’re waiting to hear more …
Reports of the new note came shortly after a hearing on news orgs’ request to unseal records in the case, including the names of jurors. Alice Ollstein reports.
Manafort jury asks to go home early today. Deliberations will continue the rest of this afternoon and resume Monday. Here’s the latest.