Good day all. Last week the trial of Paul Manafort began, and already the judge hearing the case has landed on Mueller’s prosecutors for not paying attention to his rulings.
The judge hearing the case, Judge T.S. Ellis III, hasn’t been a big fan of Mueller’s attempts to extort Manafort into “Turning on” President Trump, and has said so. Here’s the details of what’s been going on from Law & Crime:
Paul Manafort‘s third day on trial over charges of bank fraud and tax evasion was cut a bit short on Thursday after government attorneys made the same mistake twice in a row. The last witness called to the stand was J. Philip Ayliff, a certified public accountant (CPA) at Paul Manafort’s long-serving tax-preparation agency, Kositzka, Wicks and Co. (KWC), of Richmond, Virginia. As time inched along during the last witness’s testimony, nothing of particular interest seemed to be occurring at all.
So it was a typical snoozefest that has a tendency to put the jury to sleep? So what was it that annoyed Judge Ellis?
Ayliff was mostly providing foundational testimony regarding the basic functions of a tax-preparation company. Prosecutors then moved on to specifics and attempted to “publish” one of Manafort’s e-file forms. Judge T.S. Ellis III‘s weariness all but amazed the courtroom as he denied the request–complete with an actual and pronounced finger-wag–before shouting:
No! You move it along!
It probably hadn’t helped matters that court had just minutes ago returned from a lengthy recess due to the prosecution calling Ayliff out of the witness order provided to both the court and the defense. But as Judge Ellis noted yesterday, he has “a long memory.”
I’m not a lawyer, but annoying the judge can’t be a good thing to do, especially for the prosecution.
Composing themselves again, the prosecution moved slowly forward before asking Ayliff to define the term “financial interest.” Ayliff began to answer the question but was immediately cut off by Ellis who noted that Ayliff was not a noticed expert. The defense then belatedly objected, prompting a quick and sarcastic dressing-down from the judge–but it was again the prosecution’s turn for scorn.
Static filled the courtroom as the longest bench conference of the day ensued. Upon returning to Ayliff’s testimony, the jury learned that the issue had been deferred until Friday–if ever. Then, Assistant U.S. Attorney Uzo Asonye asked about another term of art contained on federal tax forms. Judge Ellis, who was already standing by this point, advised Ayliff to wait and announced the court would recess early.
Again, I know absolutely nothing about court procedures, however I suspect that when a judge does something like this, he isn’t happy.
After the jury left, Ellis took a few minutes to tell the press and public all about the bench conference. As it turns out, not only was Ayliff a non-noticed witness being asked to give the equivalent of expert testimony, but the prosecution and defense had already agreed on what the term “financial interest” meant. Moreover, this agreement was provided on a proposed–and approved–jury instruction.
And what does that mean to us normal, (And by that I mean not lawyers), people?
That is, not only was Ayliff not an expert and not a noticed expert as necessitated by the Federal Rules of Evidence–but his testimony had the potential to derail an already-agreed-upon definition of the term(s) in question. This, Ellis said, could have “confused or clouded” things for the jury.
I would say that Judge Ellis is basically ripping the prosecution a new one. There has always been substantial questions regarding this prosecution and the way Mueller and his minions have handled things. From this and other opinions of read in blogs posted by actual lawyers, the indications are that Mueller could lose this case.
If I recall correctly, one lawyer said it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility for Judge Ellis to either direct a verdict of acquittal prior to the case going to the Jury, or if the jury gets it and delivers a guilty verdict, overturn it. If this were to occur, it would basically put an end to Mueller’s inquisition.
One of the past issues with Mueller and some of his minions is their history of playing fast and loose with the law. As I recall, one of Mueller’s minions, Andrew Weissman, was instrumental in prosecuting the Enron executives. The problem is, the convictions were overturned primarily due to no actual crimes being committed. According to The Federalist:
Weissman destroyed the accounting firm Arthur Anderson LLP, which once had 85,000 employees. Thanks to prosecutorial abuse, jurors were not told that Arthur Anderson didn’t have criminal intent when it shredded documents. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned the conviction, but it was too late to save the company.
Weissman also “creatively criminalized a business transaction between Merrill Lynch and Enron,” which sent four executives to jail. Weissman concocted unprecedented charges and did not allow the executives to get bail, causing massive disruption to the families before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed most of Weissman’s case.
As for Mueller, rather than being the “Supreme investigator of great skill and honesty” he’s actually pretty incompetent. Right after the 9/11 attacks, someone sent letters with anthrax in them to people in Washington and elsewhere. Mueller botched that investigation badly.
Shortly after the terrorist attacks in 2001, letters containing anthrax were mailed to media outlets and the offices of Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., killing five people and infecting 17 others. The FBI quickly focused on an innocent man named Steven Hatfill, relentlessly pursuing him for years while the real killer walked free. As Carl Cannon wrote about the botched case, ridiculous and aggressive methods were used to go after the wrong man:
So what evidence did the FBI have against Hatfill? There was none, so the agency did a Hail Mary, importing two bloodhounds from California whose handlers claimed could sniff the scent of the killer on the anthrax-tainted letters. These dogs were shown to Hatfill, who promptly petted them. When the dogs responded favorably, their handlers told the FBI that they’d ‘alerted’ on Hatfill and that he must be the killer.
Mueller and his deputy James Comey were certain they had the right guy. They didn’t, and taxpayers had to pay Hatfill $5.82 million for the error. When that settlement was announced, Cannon noted:
Mueller could not be bothered to walk across the street to attend the press conference announcing the case’s resolution. When reporters did ask him about it, Mueller was graceless. ‘I do not apologize for any aspect of the investigation,’ he said, adding that it would be erroneous ‘to say there were mistakes.’
Read the article in The Federalist to see just how dangerously incompetent and contemptuous of people’s constituional rights he actually is. I won’t bother with the Uranium One scandal he was involved with. That’s a “Russian collusion” story for another day. As to what will happen to Paul Manafort? I have no idea. What I do know is that this trial is for things that happened long ago and long before the Trump campaign hired him. Also, recall that Manafort didn’t last long either.
Thatisall
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