Yesterday, a New York judge dismissed state fraud charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, deeming them inconsistent with the state's double jeopardy law. Manafort, who turned 70 last April, is already serving a federal sentence of seven and a half years, based largely on the same conduct that underlies the state charges. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance sought to prosecute him again for those actions, lest presidential clemency reduce the punishment imposed on a Trump crony.
If you are thinking that's a blatantly political motive for a decision that is supposed to be based on considerations of justice, you are not wrong. Worse, New York's Democrat-controlled legislature amended the double jeopardy law last spring to facilitate such duplicative prosecutions in cases involving people associated with the president who benefit from clemency.
Last year a federal jury in Virginia convicted Manafort on two counts of bank fraud and deadlocked on seven other bank fraud counts, all related to misinformation in mortgage applications. (It also convicted him on five counts of filing false tax returns and one count of failing to report foreign bank accounts, but those charges are not relevant to the New York case.) Manafort later agreed to a plea deal in a separate federal case, brought in Washington, D.C., involving charges of witness tampering and conspiracy against the U.S. government. Under that agreement, which ultimately resulted in a 43-month prison sentence, Manafort admitted to the conduct underlying the hung bank fraud counts, which the Justice Department agreed to dismiss.
U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, who oversaw the Virginia case, initially said he was dismissing those counts "without prejudice," even while expressing doubt that they could ever be reinstated. In the judgment he issued last March, he said he was dismissing the hung counts "with prejudice." He nevertheless took the underlying conduct into account when he sentenced Manafort to 47 months in prison.
A few days before Manafort received that sentence, a grand jury in Manhattan indicted him on 16 state fraud charges, based on the same inaccurate mortgage applications that had led to his federal prosecution in Virginia. The New York Times reported that the charges were "designed to thwart a Trump pardon."
According to the U.S. Supreme Court, this sort of redundant prosecution does not violate the Fifth Amendment's ban on double jeopardy. But New York has a statute that provides broader protection for defendants in situations like this. It says "a person may not be separately prosecuted for two offenses based upon the same act or criminal transaction."
The question for Maxwell Wiley, the New York judge who dismissed the state charges against Manafort, was whether that law barred Vance's attempt to "thwart a Trump pardon." The answer might seem obvious, since Vance's prosecutors "concede[d] that the charges in the relevant counts in the Federal Indictment, including those in the Hung Counts, were based on the same acts and transactions that form the basis of all the charges in this New York State indictment." But Vance argued that the state charges were authorized by two exceptions to the double jeopardy law.
One exception applies to proceedings that are "nullified by a court order which dismisses the accusatory instrument but authorizes the people to obtain a new accusatory instrument charging the same offense or an offense based upon the same conduct." Wiley concluded that Judge Ellis' dismissal of the hung bank fraud counts did not amount to such an order.
The statute also says a defendant may be "separately prosecuted for two offenses based upon the same act or criminal transaction" when "each of the offenses as defined contains an element which is not an element of the other, and the statutory provisions defining such offenses are designed to prevent very different kinds of harm or evil." While the state charges against Manafort do contain elements that were not elements of the federal offenses, Wiley ruled, it cannot be credibly maintained that the state and federal statutes defining those offenses are aimed at "very different kinds of harm or evil."
Both the federal bank fraud statute and the New York statute criminalizing residential mortgage fraud, Wiley said, were aimed at "preventing the type of financial fraud that led to the financial crisis of 2008." He concluded that the other state laws under which Manafort was charged, addressing conspiracy, falsification of business records, and schemes to defraud, likewise were aimed at problems similar to those addressed by the federal laws under which he already had been prosecuted.
The recent revisions to New York's double jeopardy statute, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed into law on October 16, allow Vance and like-minded prosecutors to avoid all this complicated business. The amended law includes a new exception for former executive branch officials who served in positions requiring Senate confirmation, former members of the president's executive staff, and former employees of his campaign, transition team, businesses, or nonprofit organizations who benefit from presidential clemency after they are prosecuted for federal offenses. The exception also applies to people who are related to the president "by consanguinity or affinity within the sixth degree."
In case those broad categories don't do the trick, the exception extends to anyone who "bears accessory liability" for crimes committed by people associated with the president. There are also catchall categories for acts of clemency that help the president avoid "potential prosecution or conviction," that are related to crimes that benefited him, or that provide relief for a person who has information "material to the determination of any criminal or civil investigation, enforcement action or prosecution" involving the president.
Supporters of the bill that closed what they call "the Double Jeopardy loophole" argued that a president should not be able to suppress damaging information that might emerge from state prosecution of former underlings by pardoning them for federal offenses that are also criminal under New York law. "Either in the past or in a continuing manner, the president has talked about using the pardon power in a corrupt way to undermine the rule of law," said the bill's Senate sponsor, Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat who represents part of Long Island. "I think New York doesn't have to sit by and let the capricious use of the pardon power tie its hands."
But New York's Trump-inspired tolerance for double jeopardy sweeps more broadly than Kaminsky's high-minded rationale suggests. Why throw everyone connected to Trump under the bus, instead of simply allowing state prosecutions in cases where it can be shown that a pardon or commutation helped him avoid civil or criminal liability? The breadth of the new exception makes sense if it is a cudgel to beat Trump allies, less so if it is all about preventing him from "using the pardon power in a corrupt way to undermine the rule of law."
The revised law authorizes double jeopardy for anyone in Trump's orbit—including former secretaries, second cousins, and low-level campaign employees—who is convicted of a federal offense, even if the crime seems minor and the punishment disproportionate. Trump could still use his clemency power to help such a person, but that would not stop New York prosecutors from trying him again for the same conduct, assuming they can find a state law that applies.
If, say, Trump commuted the mandatory minimum sentence of a drug offender who once worked for one of his businesses, she would still be subject to state prosecution for the same crime. Meanwhile, a similarly situated defendant who committed the same offense but never made the mistake of working for Trump would not have to worry about a second prosecution. Call that distinction whatever you like, but it surely does not seem like upholding the rule of law.
The post As the Dismissed Charges Against Paul Manafort Show, New York Democrats Love Double Jeopardy When It Hurts Trump's Cronies appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>"I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election…" The whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump that has fueled an impeachment inquiry was made public this morning.
"This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President's main domestic political rivals," says the complaint, dated August 12. The writer was "not a direct witness to most of the events described" but found colleagues' accounts "to be credible because, in almost all cases, multiple officials recounted fact patterns that were consistent with one another."
It goes on to state that there were about a dozen people on the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. According to the complaint, this was expected to be a "routine" call and White House officials were subsequently instructed to "lock down" records of the conversation. It also says that efforts related to Zelenskiy and to digging up potential Biden dirt started long before July. (Read the whole complaint here.)
!!!! Buried in the appendix:
WB: "According to White House officials… this was 'not the first time' under this Administration that a Presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive… information."
— Tim Mak (@timkmak) September 26, 2019
Records viewed by investigative journalist Murray Waas suggest that the initial impetus for Trump's interest in Ukraine was to suss out potential fodder for pardoning Paul Manafort and discrediting the special investigation being undertaken by Robert Mueller.
"Attorneys representing Trump and Manafort respectively had at least nine conversations relating to this effort, beginning in the early days of the Trump administration, and lasting until as recently as May of this year," Waas claims in The New York Review of Books. He continues:
Through these deliberations carried on by his attorneys, Manafort exhorted the White House to press Ukrainian officials to investigate and discredit individuals, both in the US and in Ukraine, who he believed had published damning information about his political consulting work in the Ukraine. A person who participated in the joint defense agreement between President Trump and others under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, including Manafort, allowed me to review extensive handwritten notes that memorialized conversations relating to Manafort and Ukraine between Manafort's and Trump's legal teams, including Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
As personal lawyer and all-around fixer, Giuliani fills roles Manafort and Michael Cohen previously filled for Trump.
"The new disclosures in this story underscore how this scheme originated in the long-running coordination between Trump, Giuliani, and Manafort to frustrate the Mueller investigation," Waas sums up.
THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO DESTROY THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND ALL THAT IT STANDS FOR. STICK TOGETHER, PLAY THEIR GAME, AND FIGHT HARD REPUBLICANS. OUR COUNTRY IS AT STAKE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 26, 2019
Since yesterday, when a transcript of Trump's phone call with Zelenskiy was released, Zelenskiy himself has weighed in and more information about the scope of Giuliani and Trump's meddling has come out.
ABC reported yesterday that Serhiy Leshchenko, a former Zelenskiy advisor, said "it was clear" that Trump would only talk to Zelenskiy "if they will discuss the Biden case. This issue was raised many times. I know that Ukrainian officials understood." But Leshchenko apparently disputes this:
Setting record straight: @Leshchenkos confirmed to me what those of us in Kyiv already knew—he is NOT currently an advisor to Ukraine's Zelenskiy & wasn't at time of July 25 call. He said he DID NOT tell ABC insistence for leaders to discuss Biden probe was precondition for call. https://t.co/fNh5sMYj9i
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) September 26, 2019
For the Ukrainian president's part, he said on Wednesday:
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be involved in…elections of USA….We had, I think, a good phone call. It was normal, we spoke about many things, and you read it that nobody pushed it, nobody pushed me.
There's some room for interpretation in the summary of the Zelenskiy phone call that the White House put out yesterday, but it certainly isn't the good look that Trump seems to think it is.
So, this is the key statement near the start of the transcript. Note the Trump says Ukraine hasn't been "reciprocal" -- which is fine for presidents to say -- yet then the rest of the transcript lays out Trump's requests. /1 pic.twitter.com/23eaeSaqo8
— David French (@DavidAFrench) September 25, 2019
One element that peaked interest was Trump's seemingly random mention of the private security firm Crowdstrike ("I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike…I guess you have one of your wealthy people….The server, they say Ukraine has it") and the company's subsequent insistence that it has no idea why it was invoked. Crowdstrike was the firm hired by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to examine its servers, and the group that concluded "two separate Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries" had been behind the infiltration and distribution of the DNC emails.
Trump's interest in Crowdstrike seems to be for basically bonkers conspiracy-theory reasons. First, he has repeatedly claimed the company is based in Ukraine when it's actually located in California, with no apparent connection to Ukrainians. Second, Trump appears to buy into a conspiracy theory surrounding Crowdstrike, the DNC emails, Seth Rich, and a secret server.
"Not only has he endorsed this nonsensical theory on Twitter and in press conferences," writes Andy Kroll, "but we now know he does it in private calls with foreign leaders and is using the power of the oval office to press for actual investigations."
In August, Texas financial advisor and conservative commentator Edward Butowsky filed a federal lawsuit against Crowdstrike, the Democratic National Committee, law firm Perkins Coie, and others. The suit alleges that the law firm was hired by the DNC to hide "the Russian collusion hoax" and that Perkins Coie in turn "retained CrowdStrike for the purpose of creating the false narrative that the Russian government had hacked the DNC's servers."
Just saying, in Arkansas it would be illegal to label this a burger. https://t.co/NmFePFENGI
— ACLU (@ACLU) September 25, 2019
President Trump asking a foreign government or any foreign national to get dirt on a political rival is an impeachable offense.
Judge Napolitano's Chambershttps://t.co/Fmko3KRjo4— Judge Napolitano (@Judgenap) September 25, 2019
NEW: @TulsiGabbard joined @krystalball and me this afternoon. She tell us that the transcript does NOT show a "compelling case" for impeaching @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/Xyc39eQL2Z
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) September 25, 2019
Let me get this right, you're going to rip away legal access to even mint/menthol ecigs while menthol cigarettes = still available? Are there no regulators with enough of a spine to openly reject what *they know* is manufactured hysteria? @FDACommissioner https://t.co/2xFAuYYiV3
— michelleminton (@michelleminton) September 26, 2019
"The War on Whores" Documentary: Celebration and Panel Discussion
The post Whistleblower Report Alleges Trump Used Presidential Power for Personal Gain appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>A judge has ordered former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort to be transferred to the infamous Rikers Island Prison in New York City. Manafort could also face time in solitary confinement out of concern for his safety. Manafort's predicament presents a unique opportunity to have a conversation about a questionable prison tactic.
As previously reported, Manafort was convicted on charges related to tax evasion and fraud. He also ran into trouble for lying to the Department of Justice about fraud, money laundering, and his relationship with a foreign bank.
That hardly fits the bill of a hardened, violent criminal, as would be suggested by the judge's actions. His supporters are arguing the same. A source close to him said, "He's not a mob boss," in response to the news.
Neither was Kalief Browder, who spent three years at Rikers without ever seeing a trial. He was arrested by police after he was accused of stealing a backpack. Officers found nothing on his person and the accusations were later discovered to be dubious. Browder was subjected to violence by the guards and inmates, but experts believe the two years he spent in solitary confinement was the main factor that led to his 2015 suicide at the age of 22, about two years after his release.
Needless to say, there continues to be great hypocrisy in Manafort's case. Defenders of a harsher criminal justice system for average Americans have pitied Manafort. Others are saying the new development is "karma."
Scott Hechinger, public defender and policy director at Brooklyn Defender Services, wants those supporting the judge's decision in Manafort's case to see how turning a blind eye does a disservice to those like Browder.
Kalief Browder. Arrested at 16. For allegedly stealing a backpack. Stuck on Rikers on $3500 for 3.5 years. Hundreds of days in solitary confinement. Committed suicide upon release. Pretrial detention and solitary confinement killed him.https://t.co/wSV5e8M5HG
— Scott Hechinger (@ScottHech) June 4, 2019
"When we support pain, punishment, torture, harshness, pre-trial detention, solitary, guilt until proven innocent for one—no matter how much we might despise them or think they 'deserve it'—we further entrench an unjust system for all," he tweeted.
Any personal feelings of Manafort should be set aside to speak out against torture. And those with new thoughts on humanity behind bars should similarly be concerned that this is a reality for tens of thousands of Americans each year.
The post Nobody Should Be Placed in Solitary Confinement—Not Even Paul Manafort appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Yesterday the New York State Assembly approved a bill that carves out an exception to the state's ban on dual prosecutions for people associated with the president who benefit from an act of clemency after being prosecuted for a federal crime. Senate Bill 4572, which the state Senate already has passed and Gov. Andrew Cuomo supports, does not mention Donald Trump by name, but it is aimed at making sure that his cronies can still be prosecuted under state law if he pardons them or commutes their sentences.
The high-minded rationale for S.B. 4572 is that a president should not be able to suppress damaging information that might emerge from state prosecution of former underlings by pardoning them for federal offenses that are also criminal under New York law. "Either in the past or in a continuing manner, the president has talked about using the pardon power in a corrupt way to undermine the rule of law," said the bill's Senate sponsor, Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat who represents part of Long Island. "I think New York doesn't have to sit by and let the capricious use of the pardon power tie its hands."
The low-minded rationale for Kaminsky's bill is that Democrats who detest Trump want to take advantage of any weapon they can find to hurt him and people associated with him, especially since impeachment seems to be off the table. But in their eagerness to attack their political opponents, the Democrats who control New York's legislature are compromising an important principle of justice.
The U.S. Supreme Court has long held that people can be prosecuted for the same conduct under both federal and state law, notwithstanding the constitutional ban on double jeopardy, because an act criminalized by "separate sovereigns" constitutes two distinct offenses. In a case the Court is considering right now, a man convicted of illegal gun possession under both state and federal law is asking the justices to revisit that dubious doctrine, which allows double punishment for the same crime and new prosecutions of defendants who have been acquitted. But 20 states, including New York, already have laws aimed at preventing such outcomes.
New York's law says "a person may not be twice prosecuted for the same offense" and "a person may not be separately prosecuted for two offenses based upon the same act or criminal transaction." There are exceptions to that rule, but none of them covers self-protecting pardons by Donald Trump. Hence the perceived need for S.B. 4572, which applies to former executive branch officials who served in positions requiring Senate confirmation, former members of the president's executive staff, and former employees of his campaign, transition team, businesses, or nonprofit organizations who benefit from his clemency after they are prosecuted for federal offenses.
In case those broad categories don't do the trick, the new exception also encompasses anyone who "bears accessory liability" for crimes committed by people associated with the president. There are also catchall categories for acts of clemency that help the president avoid "potential prosecution or conviction," that are related to crimes that benefited him, or that provide relief for a person who has information "material to the determination of any criminal or civil investigation, enforcement action or prosecution" involving the president.
If the goal of the law were limited to the one described by Kaminsky, you might think those last three categories would suffice. Why throw everyone connected to Trump under the bus if state prosecutions are allowed in cases where it can be shown that a pardon or commutation helped him avoid civil or criminal liability? The breadth of the new exception makes sense if it is a cudgel to beat Trump allies, less so if it is all about preventing him from "using the pardon power in a corrupt way to undermine the rule of law."
Consider former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was sentenced to nearly eight years in federal prison for crimes unrelated to his work on the campaign. Manafort might or might not know things that would support civil or criminal action against the president. But under this bill, New York could prosecute him again for the same conduct (bank fraud, say) even without making that showing (since he is a former campaign official) if Trump decides to pardon him or commute his sentence. It would not matter if Trump's sole motivation was sympathy for someone he sincerely thought got a raw deal. New York prosecutors could still try to send Manafort back to prison.
The same would be true of many other people in Trump's orbit—including former secretaries, second cousins, and low-level campaign employees—who are convicted of federal offenses, even if the crime seems minor and the punishment disproportionate. Trump could still use his clemency power to help such a person, but that would not stop New York prosecutors from trying him again for the same conduct, assuming they can find a state law that applies.
If, say, Trump commuted the mandatory minimum sentence of a drug offender who once worked for one of his businesses, she would still be subject to state prosecution for the same crime. Meanwhile, a similarly situated defendant who committed the same offense but never made the mistake of working for Trump would not have to worry about a second prosecution. Call that distinction whatever you like, but it surely does not seem like upholding the rule of law.
[This post has been revised to correct the first name of New York's governor.]
The post New York Legislators Approve Double Jeopardy for Trump Cronies to Protect 'the Rule of Law' appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Paul Manafort will serve a total of seven and a half years in federal prison for various tax frauds and lies he told to government officials, and it now looks like prosecutors in New York are looking to increase the tally with state charges.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Wednesday added 43 months to Manafort's federal sentence. Last week's sentence covered multiple cases of bank and tax fraud. Today's sentence covered Manfort's lies to the Justice Department about his lobbying efforts in Ukraine, his failure to register as a foreign agent, money laundering, and witness tampering.
Almost immediately after Jackson handed down the rest of Manafort's sentence, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance announced 16 new charges against Manfort. Manafort stands accused of mortgage fraud, falsifying business records, and conspiracy, with Vance's office alleging that he profited millions off providing false information while applying for loans. These alleged crimes all took place between December 2015 and March 2016.
Because these are New York charges and not federal charges, that means President Donald Trump cannot pardon Manafort if he's convicted; which, intentional or not, gives this new indictment a feel of political motivation. Manafort is 69 years old and will spend most of his 70s in prison. There's very little justice to be served by extending that prison time even further. The New York Times reported that he faces up to an additional 25 years if convicted of state charges.
The Times notes that prosecutors had previously decided to move forward with this case regardless of whether Trump pardoned Manafort, and the paper predicts that Manafort's lawyers will argue it would count as double jeopardy to try him again in state court for the same crimes he was tried and convicted of in federal court.
Jacob Sullum noted last year that New York's Democratic attorney general is outraged at the idea that the president can use his power to pardon people she doesn't like (if the president in question is Donald Trump), and that she considers it a terrible legal "loophole" that Manafort couldn't be charged again for these same crimes by state prosecutors.
Read the details of the new indictments here.
The post Paul Manafort Sentenced to Nearly Four Additional Years in Federal Prison Just as New York Files New Charges appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Much of the outrage at former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's four-year sentence on tax and bank fraud charges contrasts his relatively lenient treatment with the draconian punishments frequently imposed on less privileged defendants. That disparity is real, although the main lesson that should be drawn from it, as C.J. Ciaramella suggested the other day, is that our criminal justice system as a whole is excessively, mindlessly punitive, often in cases involving conduct, such as exchanging drugs for money, that not only is less serious than what Manafort did but should not be treated as a crime at all. The question of whether Manafort's sentence was appropriate in light of his offenses is distinct from that broader problem, and the answer depends on how you view the moral gravity of his crimes.
While many critics of the sentence are claiming Manafort "stole $30 million," that figure refers to income he hid from the Internal Revenue Service. The loss to the U.S. Treasury was the taxes he owed but did not pay, which according to federal prosecutors amounted to $6 million. In the process of avoiding that tax bill, Manafort did a bunch of things, such as filing false tax returns and failing to report foreign bank accounts, each of which corresponds to a separate charge. Six of the eight counts on which a jury convicted Manafort relate to those tax-dodging actions: filing false tax returns for the years 2010 through 2014 (five counts) and failing to report foreign bank accounts in 2012 (one count).
Manafort also was convicted of bank fraud related to loans he sought under false pretenses from two lenders. Prosecutors said those loans entailed a "fraud loss" of $6 million. But as Manafort's lawyers noted in their sentencing memorandum, $5.5 million of that figure is attributed to a loan that was never completed. In other words, the $6 million is mostly notional, based on an "intended loss" rather than money that actually changed hands. Assuming that the balance was loaned and never repaid, you could say Manafort stole $500,000, although according to his lawyers "all of the loans at issue in this case were performing under the terms of the relevant loan agreements until the Special Counsel's Office initiated the prosecutions of Mr. Manafort and brought forfeiture allegations, which resulted in over $2 million in cash being frozen."
Knowingly filing a false tax return is a felony punishable by up to three years in prison, and Manafort was convicted of doing that five times. Willfully failing to report a foreign bank account is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison, and Manafort was convicted of one count. Bank fraud is a felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison, and Manafort was convicted of two counts. You can start to see how the punishment recommended by federal sentencing guidelines, which take into account factors such the defendant's role in the offense, his prior criminal record, and the amount of money involved, was 235 to 293 months, or about 19.5 to 24 years.
U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III, who described Manafort's tax evasion as "a theft of money from everyone who pays taxes," nevertheless deemed the recommended sentencing range "excessive" in light of the penalties received by defendants in similar cases. He suggested that anyone who thought four years was inadequate should "go and spend a day, a week in jail or in the federal penitentiary. He has to spend 47 months." While it's true that four years in federal prison is hardly a slap on the wrist, it would be nice if the legislators who enact mandatory minimum sentences that range from five years to life (none of which applied in this case) showed a similar awareness.
"Given the age and the health of this defendant, this is the kind of sentence that you can generally expect in a white-collar prosecution," a former federal prosecutor told The Washington Post. "The sentencing guidelines and the request by the government for 19 to 24 years was something the judge was never going to seriously entertain, and I think what we saw here was a recognition that even this sentence could well be a life sentence for Mr. Manafort."
Manafort, who is 69, will soon be sentenced in a separate case in which he pleaded guilty to witness tampering and a conspiracy against the U.S. government involving tax fraud, money laundering, failure to report foreign bank accounts, failure to register as a foreign agent, and lying to the Justice Department. The recommended range in that case, which involves some of the same underlying conduct as the case in which he has already been sentenced, is 188 to 235 months, or nearly 16 to almost 20 years. But the statutory maximum for those counts is five years each, meaning his sentence could be as long as 10 additional years.
The post Here Is What Paul Manafort Was Convicted of Doing appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>A federal judge has sentenced international sleazebag and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to 47 months in prison. This was a dramatic downward departure from the federal sentencing guidelines, which recommended 19 to 24 years in prison for Manafort's panoply of criminal offenses, but U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III declared that Manafort "has lived an otherwise blameless life." It was surely the first time the word "blameless" has been uttered in the same breath as Manafort's name.
The sentence has sparked outrage from many who felt it was a mere slap on the wrist. For instance, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) says Manafort's sentence shows the "absolute unfairness" of the justice system.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y) has chimed in on Twitter. "Paul Manafort getting such little jail time for such serious crimes lays out for the world how it's almost impossible for rich people to go to jail for the same amount of time as someone who is lower income," she wrote. "In our current broken system, 'justice' isn't blind. It's bought."
The reaction to Manafort's sentence is understandable. There is a gut revulsion when one sees a rich prat get off easy while less fortunate people are railroaded daily. We instinctively feel it's wrong when, say, the feds cut a sweetheart deal with ultra-rich Jeffrey Epstein to avoid prosecuting him when there was credible evidence that he was a serial sexual predator.
Many compared Manafort's sentence to Crystal Mason, a Texas woman who received five years in state prison for mistakenly voting while she was on parole. I've interviewed numerous people who received outrageous sentences for nonviolent drug crimes, like a woman who was sentenced to life in federal prison for trading a few bottles of sudafed for meth.
But the problem with Manafort's sentence isn't that the judge departed from the guidelines that are routinely used to lock away poor defendants for decades. The problem is that the guidelines are that high to begin with—and that in most of the drug and gun cases that federal judges oversee, their hands are tied by mandatory minimum sentencing laws, unlike in many white-collar cases.
As legal commentator and former federal prosecutor Ken White explains in The Atlantic, several factors make Manafort's sentence more than just a simple example of a judge showing favor to a wealthy white defendant:
[T]he 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 how the system's discrepancies become self-justifying and self-perpetuating: Judges give white-collar criminals lower sentences because white-collar criminals typically get lower sentences.
The answer to disparities in the criminal justice system isn't to call for harsher punishments. Pillorying judges who go easy on well-heeled defendants—the successful recall of the California judge who sentenced Brock Turner, for example—doesn't make them more likely to show mercy to defendants who statistically receive longer sentences on average. It makes them less likely to show mercy, period. Indeed, concern over judicial bias is what largely led to the end of indeterminate sentencing in states like California and the rise of mandatory minimums.
Meanwhile, four years in federal lockup is nothing to sniff at, even in the minimum-security camp Manafort will likely end up in. In any case, Manafort will face sentencing by another judge next week for violations of foreign lobbying laws, and that judge could slap him with up to 10 more years in prison.
He'll have plenty of time to think about his crimes. The tragedy is he'll be serving it alongside people doing far more for far less.
The post Paul Manafort's Lenient Prison Sentence Isn't the Travesty—the Rest of the System Is appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>
The House voted 407–23 yesterday for a resolution to condemn bigotry in all its forms, including Islamophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism. But the whole affair was a bit more complicated than that.
The resolution itself was prompted by some comments that freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.) made last week about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobbying organization. "I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it's OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country," said Omar, a Muslim, referring to Israel. "I want to ask why is it OK for me to talk about the influence of the NRA, of fossil fuel industries or Big Pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobbying group that is influencing policies?"
Many people viewed those remarks as anti-Semitic. The representatives who originally drafted the House legislation—Eliot L. Engel (D–N.Y.) and Ted Deutch (D–Fla.)—wanted to specifically condemn Omar's remarks and anti-Semitic rhetoric in general, according to The Washington Post. It quickly evolved into a resolution that condemned anti-Semitism but not Omar. In the end, it criticized various forms of bigotry, not just anti-Semitism, and specifically mentioned "false and vicious attacks on and threats to Muslim-Americans for alleged association with terrorism."
The resolution's shifting scope led 23 House Republicans, upset that it didn't go condemn Omar, to vote against it. The bill "became so generic that it lost its meaning or significance," read a statement from Rep. Louie Gohmert (R–Texas), who claimed that Democrats had "rationalized" Omar's allegedly anti-Semitic comments.
Those comments, meanwhile, sparked a firestorm of debate over who the real bigots are. To many conservatives, Omar is at fault for her remarks and House Democrats for not standing up to her.
It is shameful that House Democrats won't take a stronger stand against Anti-Semitism in their conference. Anti-Semitism has fueled atrocities throughout history and it's inconceivable they will not act to condemn it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 6, 2019
The resolution was "a sham put forward by Democrats to avoid condemning one of their own and denouncing vile anti-Semitism," declared Rep. Liz Cheney (R–Wyo.) yesterday. Omar "deserves to be rebuked, by name, and removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee," Cheney added.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), meanwhile, called attention to the Republicans who voted no on the resolution:
Where's the outrage over the 23 GOP members who voted NO on a resolution condemning bigotry today?
Oh, there's none?
Did they get called out, raked over, ambushed in halls and relentlessly asked why not?
No? Okay. Got it.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 8, 2019
This wasn't just about Republicans criticizing Democrats. It was also about internal divisions amongst Democrats. Jonathan Allen of NBC News writes that "the entire episode dramatically exposed the ideological, religious, generational and racial divides within the Democrats' caucus at a time when they are desperate to demonstrate to the country that they are using their newfound majority to govern."
Naturally, the discussion made it into the 2020 presidential race. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.) who's running for president, lightly criticized Omar but also slammed the "hypocrisy of the Republican Party." Omar's GOP critics "said little or nothing when President Trump defended white supremacists at Charlottesville," according to Gillibrand. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), and Kamala Harris (D–Ca.) weighed in too.
Controversy over a 40-ounce…water bottle? Some Brooklyn residents are upset that a company called Ounce Water, founded by Sons of Anarchy actor Theo Rossi and his wife Meghan McDermott, is selling water bottles in the shape of malt liquor containers. The goal is to "take something that once was part of poisoning people (malt liquor) and instead fill your bottle with health and life," McDermott tells Yahoo! The company wants people to drink 80 ounces of water a day, so consuming one bottle would represent half of that.
The Brooklyn-based activists claim the company is trying to sell the water to black communities. The organization Breukelen Rise invokes the "traumatic history of malt liquor in the black community."
"That history is of high alcohol content, cheap liquors that were sold and heavily promoted through rap music and all kinds of marketing and entertainment," community member Christine Gilliam tells Yahoo! The thinking, I guess, is that while children may drink water from a 40-ounce water bottle at first, they'll eventually want the real thing: malt liquor.
Booker introduces the "next step" on criminal justice reform. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey introduced the "Next Step Act" yesterday, saying on Twitter that he's trying to "push for bolder, more progressive criminal justice reform":
I supported the First Step Act—a historic criminal justice bill recently signed into law – but that's just the beginning.
Today I'm introducing a new bill – the Next Step Act – to push for bolder, more progressive criminal justice reform. Here's what we're fighting for: pic.twitter.com/98PDv3De5J
— Sen. Cory Booker (@SenBooker) March 7, 2019
The legislation comes less than three months after Congress passed the FIRST STEP Act, which, as Reason's C.J. Ciaramella notes in in the April issue, "is intended as a stepping stone to larger reforms." So what does the Next Step Act do? According to CBS News, the legislation pushes
reforms like eliminating the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences, reducing mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenses, and reinstating the right to vote in federal elections for the formerly incarcerated.
It would also include legislation Booker reintroduced last week that would end federal prohibition of marijuana and expunge federal convictions for use and possession.
QUICK HITS
I'm sure there's a strained metaphor about freedom there. I'm just not sure what it is.
The post Ilhan Omar's Israel Remarks Prompt Politicians to Bicker Over Who the <em>Real</em> Bigots Are: Reason Roundup appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>
Chicago Tribune's reporting this week on the psychological devastation of Anthony Gay's 22 years of solitary confinement should make you feel pity, horror, and rage over how our incarceration systems run.
Gay, now 44, was convicted in 1994, when he was 18, of robbery after a street fight with another teen where he stole a hat and a single dollar. He was sentenced to probation, which was revoked when he was caught driving without a license. Then, what should have been a short prison stint ended up becoming years and years in solitary, as the frequently suicidal young man would keep getting into fights with guards.
Trapped alone in his cell with very little psychological support or assistance, Gay turned to self-harm, mutilating his arm (there's photo evidence in the story), other parts of his body, and even his testicles. His confrontations with guards resulted in repeated new indictments, often stacked separately to extend his jail time for the purpose of making an example out of him. He eventually had 97 years tacked onto his sentence.
He finally turned to legal help (he represented himself during all these indictments while he was incarcerated). Eventually lawyers got his sentence reduced and now he's free. He's also suing the state of Illinois over the use of solitary confinement and the visible, terrible impact it had on his mental health.
It would take a special kind of awful person to downplay the real horror of Gay's story in order to attempt (and fail miserably) to score some sort of political points on Twitter. So let's see what former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. is up to these days:
Don't remember ANY Lying Lib News outlet writing sob stories about Paul Manafort being held in solitary confinement 24-7 as a form of torture to squeeze him into making something up about @realDonaldTrump. Where was the concern for HIS mental well-being? https://t.co/WrQfjMwPhj
— David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) January 3, 2019
Oh. I see. We probably shouldn't expect Clarke to actually care about what happened to Gay in prison. Recall that under Clarke's leadership in Milwaukee County, a man died of dehydration in the county jail after being denied water for a week. He has also made it abundantly clear that he opposes criminal justice reform and is generally supporter of a cruel prison system. He actually titled a chapter of his book, "Guess What? Prison Is Supposed to Be Unpleasant."
So one might think Clarke would actually be repulsed by the special treatment Paul Manafort actually received while was in federal jail (and a reminder here: He was only incarcerated in the first place because he violated the terms of his pretrial release and contacted witnesses in his case to allegedly attempt to influence their testimony). Unlike most people who are in "solitary" confinement, Manafort was not actually stuck in his cell, had access to computer equipment and a phone, and met with his legal team regularly.
People who aren't wealthy and connected to the president don't have such kind experiences in jail, thanks exactly to terrible people like Clarke. His sudden but very, very limited concern about the effects of solitary confinement is reminiscent of the Republican members of Congress who cared about misuse of federal surveillance tools against people connected to President Donald Trump, yet nevertheless voted in favor of renewing and expanding the authority of the government to use these surveillance tools against other American citizens.
But hey, in the end, Clarke's horrible tweet is probably drawing attention to a horror story that might have slipped under many people's radars. So there's that, anyway.
The headline has been updated to correct a name.
The post Ex-Sheriff David Clarke, Defender of Harsh Prisons, Whines about Manafort's Jail Treatment appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Federal prosecutors are recommending that former Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen serve a "substantial" prison sentence (around four years) for his eight tax fraud and campaign violation crimes, according to a memo released today.
But also, significantly, the memo documents Cohen's claims that he was operating at the behest of Trump when he paid off two women Trump allegedly had affairs with to keep them from going to the press during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Cohen pleaded guilty to those crimes back in August and said back then that he arranged payments on then-candidate Trump's behalf and at his request. Cohen was paid for this work through some money laundering methods to conceal the political purposes behind the payments.
So Cohen actually saying he was doing it at Trump's request isn't new. But one of the sentencing memos released today (by federal prosecutors with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York) makes it clear they believe Cohen:
"Individual-1" in these memos is Trump, just in case it's not clear. And no, these aren't charges coming from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigations. These are all from New York's federal courts and are unrelated to the investigation of whether anybody in Trump's circle coordinated with Russian officials in their attempts to manipulate the outcome of the 2016 election.
That's the other sentencing memo. Mueller's office also submitted a sentencing memo today for Cohen's other guilty plea from the end of November, where he acknowledged lying to Congress when he said negotiations with Russia to build a hotel in Moscow had ended before the primary season kicked off in the spring of 2016 (they had not). Mueller's memo says Cohen has met with the special counsel's office in seven different sessions to provide valuable information. Cohen told them he had been in communication with Russian nationals as far back as November 2015, a few months after Trump formally declared he was running for president, to try to arrange possible meetings between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mueller's memo is not giving a specific sentencing recommendation, but because Cohen is being cooperative and has accepted responsibility for his lies, his office is requesting that any prison time for which he might be sentenced for misleading Congress be run concurrently with the sentences he gets for his fraud and campaign violation plea bargain with the New York office.
Both the New York sentencing memo and Mueller's memo can be read here.
Trump tweets a response!
Totally clears the President. Thank you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2018
Well … okay, then.
Meanwhile, some more details are coming out from the Department of Justice explaining why they say former campaign head Paul Manafort breached his plea agreement conditions with them:
Mueller's office says Manafort remained in contact with a "senior" Trump administration official though February 2018, well after he was indicted, and lied about it. They confirmed his contacts with administration officials by search his electronic documents. pic.twitter.com/7Y5quOG9tc
— Brad Heath (@bradheath) December 7, 2018
It is a mystery how Manafort could have thought he could have contacts with Trump administration officials after he was indicted and not be found out. But there you have it.
The post Prosecutors Recommend Prison for Cohen, Say He Paid off Women on Trump's Behalf appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange multiple times between 2013 and 2016, according to The Guardian. One of those meetings reportedly occurred in spring 2016, around the time Manafort joined the Trump campaign and several months before WikiLeaks published Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails that were obtained by Russian hackers.
Citing a "well-placed source," the Guardian says Manafort went to see Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London around March 2016, though the exact date is "tentative." It was several months later, on July 22, that WikiLeaks published thousands of DNC documents obtained by Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, or GRU. Nearly two years later, in July 2018, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the Department of Justice (DOJ) had filed criminal charges against 12 Russian intelligence officials who were allegedly involved in the hack.
As the Guardian notes, Manafort has claimed he had nothing to do with the hack. It's also not clear what Manafort and Assange spoke about. But an internal document authored by Secretaría Nacional de Inteligencia (SENAIN), Ecuador's intelligence agency, suggests that when Manafort visited Assange in 2013, he was joined by "Russians."
He came back at least two more times. Per the Guardian:
According to two sources, Manafort returned to the embassy in 2015. He paid another visit in spring 2016, turning up alone, around the time Trump named him as his convention manager. The visit is tentatively dated to March.
WikiLeaks, meanwhile, quickly denied the Guardian's report, indicating Manafort never met with Assange.
Remember this day when the Guardian permitted a serial fabricator to totally destroy the paper's reputation. @WikiLeaks is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor's head that Manafort never met Assange. https://t.co/R2Qn6rLQjn
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 27, 2018
Manafort was officially named Trump's convention manager on March 29, 2016. On May 19, he was promoted to campaign chairman and chief strategist. But things went downhill for him from there. The New York Times reported in August that Manafort had received undisclosed payments from former Ukrainian President Viktor F. Yanukovych's political party. Manafort denied it:
this was easily the best Manafort moment from the campaign pic.twitter.com/Va63SLdb4o
— Joe Perticone (@JoePerticone) November 27, 2018
Manafort left the Trump campaign later that month. More than a year later, in October 2017, he became the first person to be indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of a larger investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. As Reason's Scott Shackford reported this past August, Manafort was found guilty of eight out of 18 charges related to tax evasion and bank fraud.
Manafort later accepted a plea deal in Mueller's Russia probe. But that deal now appears to be falling apart, as Mueller has accused Manafort of lying to both the FBI and Mueller's office.
Trump, meanwhile, has continued to deny that his campaign colluded with Russia:
The Phony Witch Hunt continues, but Mueller and his gang of Angry Dems are only looking at one side, not the other. Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie. Mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2018
….The Fake News Media builds Bob Mueller up as a Saint, when in actuality he is the exact opposite. He is doing TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice System, where he is only looking at one side and not the other. Heroes will come of this, and it won't be Mueller and his…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2018
….terrible Gang of Angry Democrats. Look at their past, and look where they come from. The now $30,000,000 Witch Hunt continues and they've got nothing but ruined lives. Where is the Server? Let these terrible people go back to the Clinton Foundation and "Justice" Department!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2018
UPDATE: Following publication of this article, WikiLeaks said it plans to sue The Guardian over what it claims is an inaccurate report. Manafort has also responded, calling the report "totally false and deliberately libelous."
Some in the media world, meanwhile, have raised questions over the Guardian's report, noting that the sourcing is vague and that if Manafort really did visit Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, there would be more evidence, including video proof. Moreover, Luke Harding, who wrote the report, is the author of a book titled "Collusion: How Russia Helped Trump Win the White House."
The post Report Claims Paul Manafort Met With Julian Assange Months Before WikiLeaks Published DNC Emails appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Paul Manafort's plea deal is falling apart, as FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller accuses him of lying in his statement. It's bad news for both men—but good news for President Trump. Federal prosecutors didn't say what Manafort allegedly lied about (other than that it involved "a variety of subject matters") or how they had caught it.
"Manafort denied doing so intentionally, but both sides agreed in a court filing that U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson…should set sentencing immediately," reports The Washington Post.
The filing also indicated that Mueller's team may have lost its potentially most valuable witness in Manafort, a top campaign official present at discussions at the heart of the special counsel's mission to determine if any Americans conspired with Russia's efforts to sway the U.S. election.
As a former manager of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, Manafort is certainly privy to lots of private information about how it operated, including whether it "colluded" with Russians.
But that's not what Manafort was under fire for in federal criminal court; those charges stemmed from Manafort's years as a sort of international calamity mercenary, providing political consulting services to shady authoritarian characters worldwide and, particularly, for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and other pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine.
In August, a jury found Manafort guilty of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud, and one count of failing to report a foreign bank account. A mistrial was declared on 10 remaining charges, which could have meant a second jury trial to consider whether he was guilty of failing to register as a foreign agent, money laundering, witness tampering, and lying to federal prosecutors.
The following month, Manafort accepted a plea deal, copping to two counts of conspiracy (one against the U.S. and one to obstruct justice), and agreeing to cooperate in Mueller's Russia probe.
Now, prosecutors say in the court filing that "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."
Here was Trump's response:
The Phony Witch Hunt continues, but Mueller and his gang of Angry Dems are only looking at one side, not the other. Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie. Mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2018
….The Fake News Media builds Bob Mueller up as a Saint, when in actuality he is the exact opposite. He is doing TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice System, where he is only looking at one side and not the other. Heroes will come of this, and it won't be Mueller and his…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2018
….terrible Gang of Angry Democrats. Look at their past, and look where they come from. The now $30,000,000 Witch Hunt continues and they've got nothing but ruined lives. Where is the Server? Let these terrible people go back to the Clinton Foundation and "Justice" Department!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2018
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, current President Petro Poroshenko's proposed declaration of martial law for 30 days was just approved by the country's parliament, following a flare-up in conflict with Russia. "There's little debate about what happened Sunday when three Ukrainian naval vessels attempted to pass through a narrow bottleneck separating the Crimean Peninsula and the Russian mainland," said NPR's Lucian Kim yesterday.
In a video filmed aboard a Russian coast guard ship, crewmembers can be heard cursing before ramming a Ukrainian tugboat. Neither side denies that later the Russian coast guard opened fire to stop the other two Ukrainian vessels and seized all three of them together with their crews. Ukraine says six seamen were injured, and the Kremlin accused Ukraine of committing a dangerous provocation.
Poroshenko framed his move as necessary in the face of potential Russian aggression on land. Emma Ashford of the Cato Institute comments:
Once again, it's a toss up as to whether Ukraine's worst enemy is the Russians or its own political elites. https://t.co/gCfxJG6MLH
— Emma Ashford (@EmmaMAshford) November 26, 2018
And from journalist Michael Tracey:
Ukraine's strongman president, whose government is demonstrably backed by actual Nazis, declares martial law and of course the big US media reaction is that Russia hasn't been condemned aggressively enough
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) November 27, 2018
Among U.S. political elites, that's certainly been true. The Hill reports that "Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) on Monday urged President Trump to commit additional military assistance to Ukraine in response to Russian aggression near Crimea." And here's Nikki Haley at the United Nations emergency session yesterday:
Do you like us? Now's the time to show it! It's the first day of Reason's annual webathon (and "Giving Tuesday," if you're into that sort of thing). More details here.
On #GivingTuesday, help support @reason in our second 50 years of bringing libertarian news, politics, culture, and ideas to the wider world! Giving levels and swag deets at https://t.co/oXUqQFzc8t
— Nick Gillespie (@nickgillespie) November 27, 2018
Three cheers for #FOIA, thanks to which we now have the video of a border agent's gender reveal explosion that ended up burning 47,000 acres of land https://t.co/FLaZ3AsP7a pic.twitter.com/V71v2Zg1Ck
— Peter Bonilla (@pebonilla) November 27, 2018
The post Manafort's Lies Are Mueller's Loss, Too—But Good News for Trump: Reason Roundup appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Paul Manafort, facing a second criminal trial about his secret financial ties to a former Russia-friendly Ukrainian president, has agreed to plead guilty to two charges and has agreed to cooperate with FBI Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
At a plea hearing in a D.C. federal court today, Manafort pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy against the United States and a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice. Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, was convicted in August of eight charges of tax evasion and bank fraud for concealing the money he had made from pro-Russian interests in Ukraine (including its former President Viktor Yanukovych). But those were only some of the charges against him. He faced an additional trial this month for failing to register as a foreign agent, lying to the feds about it, laundering money, and then attempting to contact and influence the testimony of two witnesses (which, once discovered, resulted in his bail being revoked).
Manafort has agreed in his plea to cooperate with the federal probe to determine the extent that Russian government interests attempted to influence and alter the outcome of the 2016 election. While it's not entirely clear what that will mean as yet, that's the part that matters in the long run. The crimes Manafort has been convicted of are not directly connected to Trump and his campaign in any way and most of them preceded Manafort's work for Trump. The response from Trump and the White House has been (and continues to be) that none of these charges show any sort of collusion between Trump and Russia, and that's absolutely true.
But given Manafort's pre-existing financial connections to Russia, his agreement to help prosecutors with further investigations will most certainly feed speculation and theories that there's more to these relationships than we're currently publicly aware of, beyond what we've been told about Russian lobbyists offering stolen emails and data from Hillary Clinton's campaign to Trump's team.
This does not necessarily mean that Manafort has any dirt on Trump, not that this is going to stop any sort of speculation that he does. In a Twitter thread, former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Renato Mariotti explains that Manafort has agreed to cooperate with the feds on any potential activity by anybody that's relevant to Mueller's investigation. That Mueller accepted the plea deal means they believe he certainly must have helpful information about somebody's illegal behavior, but this should not be taken to mean that it's about Trump.
A good indicator as to whether Manafort does have anything about Trump may be to keep an eye on what our unpredictable, uncontrollable president might tweet about his decision to cop a plea in exchange for cooperation. Remember Trump has a very dim view on people who "flip" on him and thinks it should "almost" be illegal.
Manafort has not yet been sentenced for his first round of convictions. Given his age, 69, and the number of charges, he faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison, depending on how harshly the judge decides to punish him.
UPDATE: The details of the plea agreement are starting to be released. The cooperation component appears very extensive. (Here's a link to the full plea agreement)
NEW: Manafort's agreement with DOJ requires him to "cooperate fully, truthfully, completely, and forthrightly," including participating in debriefings, providing all relevant documents, and testifying if the government asks him to. pic.twitter.com/3jGe0Bk1mt
— Brad Heath (@bradheath) September 14, 2018
The post Manafort Reaches Plea Deal, Agrees to Help Mueller's Russia Investigation appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>"Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit."—Matthew 7:17
There is one apparent reason the president of the United States was not indicted Tuesday in the same case that yielded a guilty plea from his longtime personal lawyer. It's not because prosecutors think he is innocent. It's because he is president.
The U.S. Justice Department has long taken the position that a sitting president is exempt from indictment. Only after he leaves office are prosecutors free to pursue criminal charges against him. Unless that policy changes, Donald Trump will serve the remainder of his time in office under the specter of prison.
Let that sink in a moment. Prosecutors may postpone his indictment. Congress may refuse to impeach him or convict him. But Americans will be living under the administration of someone who has been implicated in a crime by a close associate—and who they may eventually learn is guilty of one or more felonies. The nation is being governed by an unindicted co-conspirator.
Trump's defenders deprecate the importance of the campaign finance violations that Michael Cohen admitted. They make much of the absence of any connection to Russia. They take vindication from a jury's failure to convict Paul Manafort on 10 of the 18 charges that he faced.
It's tempting to call such defenders slavish. But slaves were often unenthusiastic and slow in performing their assigned tasks. Trump's defenders need no whips to motivate them.
They are better described as cultlike in their fervent willingness to believe whatever they have to believe to remain faithful. They would rather eat the foul fruit than recognize the nature of the tree.
If we know nothing else about Trump, we know that he finds the company of criminals as warm and inviting as a Jacuzzi. No president in history has shown such a fondness for employing people of felonious character. So far, five of his associates have been convicted of crimes or pleaded guilty.
It is people of firm probity who make Trump uncomfortable—James Comey, who wouldn't agree to "go easy" on one of those confessed felons (Michael Flynn); Robert Mueller, who has served his country as a decorated Marine, federal prosecutor, and FBI director, all without a hint of scandal; Rod Rosenstein, who has refused to fire Mueller as special counsel; and a host of journalists whose sole sin is to report unflattering facts about Trump.
Let's not forget his deep animus for Barack Obama, who served two terms without any credible allegation of corruption against him or anyone in his circle of aides or associates. The closest thing to a major criminal case in that White House involved CIA Director David Petraeus, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of giving classified documents to his biographer.
It is not impossible that Cohen committed his campaign finance crimes—paying hush money to keep two women from making public their claims of having sex with Trump, to help him win the election—without the knowledge or approval of his boss.
But Trump hasn't earned the benefit of any doubt. At every stage, he has told lies that were later exposed and acknowledged. The president denied that he knew of the payment to Stormy Daniels, only to later admit it. He also had to admit that he personally reimbursed Cohen, who originally insisted that he bore the cost.
Speaking of people willing to make financial sacrifices out of their devotion to Trump, his former campaign manager was convicted on eight felony counts Tuesday. Trump said the convictions "had nothing to do with Russian collusion," but Manafort had extensive ties to a Russian oligarch and Russian businesses—and owed them millions of dollars.
At the time he took the job with Trump, his defense lawyers admitted during the trial, Manafort had no income. Yet Trump was happy to let him run the campaign. Did Trump not know that his unpaid campaign manager was in financial trouble that gave pro-Russian foreign interests leverage over him? Or did he not think to wonder why Manafort was so eager to work for nothing?
Manafort is just one of the noxious products of a corrupt tree. Tuesday was a bad day for the president and the country. But our experience with Trump suggests that the worst is yet to come.
The post The Unindicted Co-Conspirator in the Oval Office appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Critics of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have adopted a new line of attack in the wake of yesterday's federal convictions of President Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. Until all of the facts about Trump's own alleged corruption and criminality are known, these critics say, the U.S. Senate has no choice but to place Kavanaugh's SCOTUS nomination on hold.
"Americans deserve to know the full truth about illegal activity in the Trump campaign and by Donald Trump himself," declared Marge Baker, executive vice president of the liberal activist group People for the American Way. "That means the Senate needs to make clear that it will not confirm his pick to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh."
Democratic Rep. David Cicillin of Rhode Island put it more bluntly: "A President who's also an unindicted co-conspirator should not get to make lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court."
Liberal MSNBC host Chris Hayes made a similar point: "So the Senate is just gonna rush ahead to confirm the president's nominee to the Supreme Court amidst all this? Really?"
If the history of modern judicial confirmation proceedings is any guide, then yes, the Senate really is going to confirm Kavanaugh amidst all this. After all, something similar has happened in the Senate before.
Consider what transpired back in the eventual months of September and October 1998. On September 3, Congress received the so-called Starr report, which, among other things, argued that President Bill Clinton had committed 11 impeachable offenses. A month later, on October 5, the House Judiciary Committee recommended opening an impeachment inquiry into Clinton's actions. On October 8, the House of Representatives officially began its inquiry into Clinton's impeachment.
At the same time that the House Judiciary Committee was weighing the contents of the Starr report, the Senate was weighing the record of a federal district court judge named Sonia Sotomayor, who President Clinton had nominated to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. On October 3, the Senate confirmed Sotomayor to the federal appellate bench by a vote of 67-29.
In other words, with the very real possibility of a presidential impeachment looming on the horizon, the Senate debated, voted on, and confirmed the judicial pick of that potentially lawbreaking president. Sound familiar?
Here's some advice for anybody who is seriously hoping to see Senate Republicans hit the pause button on Kavanaugh over Cohen-Manafort: Don't hold your breath.
The post Does Cohen-Manafort Mean Supreme Court Nominee Kavanaugh Can't Be Confirmed? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Donald Trump surrounds himself with crooks.
Yesterday's twin news—that Trump organization fixer Michael Cohen had confessed in court to multiple crimes including violating campaign finance law, and that Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort was found guilty on eight counts of bank fraud and other financial crimes—mostly serves to reinforce what we've known, or at least suspected, for awhile now. Trump, the real estate swindler who played a fake businessman on a reality TV show, liked to surround himself with a cast of shady characters. It did not take a psychic to see yesterday's news, or something like it, coming.
If there was anything like a revelation in yesterday's events, it was that Cohen implicated Trump in his scheme, saying that his illegal payoff of Stormy Daniels was done in coordination with a "candidate" and members of a campaign. Cohen did not explicitly name Trump, but there is only one candidate in this story, and he is now our president. Cohen, and his lawyer Lanny Davis, are all but suggesting that Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal act. ("If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn't they be a crime for Donald Trump?" Davis tweeted.)
Trump has responded by turning on Cohen, the close associate he publicly defended as recently as April, tweeting that he would "strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Michael Cohen." (Another non-surprise: There is no honor amongst fixers and campaign finance violators.) Trump's recommendation has the virtue of being good advice. But it is good advice that Trump himself did not follow.
Does it matter that this was a campaign finance violation? After all, just a few years ago, Barack Obama's 2008 campaign was hit with a $375,000 fine for errors in its own campaign finance reporting. In one sense, the history is useful to consider in that it suggests the prevalence of campaign finance violations. Spend enough time looking, and you might find related violations on nearly any large campaign.
In another sense, however, it's beside the point. The actions that Cohen took at the alleged direction of Trump were deliberately designed to deceive—not just the government, but, as The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf writes, the electorate. There were intended, according to Cohen's statement, to influence the outcome of the election. Even if you don't believe this should be treated as a crime, it remains a lie crafted to manipulate voters.
Yet that, too, is no surprise. Trump lies, repeatedly, about almost everything. His height. His steaks. His knowledge of the very hush-money payments that Cohen claims he made at Trump's direction. Trump is not exactly known for painful honesty.
Trump is who we thought he was. The Manafort and Cohen news only offers further confirmation. The fundamental lack of surprise, the sense that this was inevitable and that nothing has really changed, is likely to drive much of the political reaction—or lack thereof—going forward.
Yes, it's true that Trump is not a particularly popular president, but Trump remains quite popular with Republican voters—and Republican voters elect Republican members of Congress. As long as Republicans maintain congressional majorities beholden to a Trump-loyal voter base, it's unlikely that we'll see much of a response from the GOP. As Reason's Jesse Walker noted last night, this is a legal matter, but it will play out entirely along political lines.
Indeed, Trump and his defenders are already dismissing the Cohen case as beside the point. Neither Cohen nor Manafort should have broken the law, but what they did was irrelevant to the larger question at hand, which is Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference.
That's true for the moment, but perhaps not for long. Cohen's lawyer said last night that Cohen would be willing to tell Mueller "all that he knows" about the Trump campaign—including "knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on." Granted, Cohen may not be the most trustworthy source, but then, when the subject is Trump, not-very-trustworthy sources are what you have. It's unlikely that this story will end here.
But if it did, the most straightforward lesson would be one we already know all too well: The president surrounds himself with crooks. Maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe it won't. But it should.
The post Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort Are a Reminder That Donald Trump Surrounds Himself With Crooks appeared first on Reason.com.
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