Not a federal “poumd me in the ass” prison? Damn.
ETA - Joking, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone
I did see Brennan’s commentary and I put a lot of store by what he knows/says. I hope his information is accurate and want to believe tomorrow will be a meaningful, important day in our history. Or failing that, very, very soon.
With Rod Rosenstein leaving his post in mid-March (having said that he’d be staying until the Mueller report was delivered), along with everything happening on Fridays, and the Ides of March, means that the tea leaves suggest tomorrow could be a big day. Brennan says in the clip that he thinks these will be the final indictments and delivery of the report. :eek:
[Moderator Note]
The Registration Agreement prohibits harassment or promotion of a cause. On this basis, I have edited out the phone number you posted. Do not post such messages again.
Colibri
Moderator
I, too, took Rosenstein’s impending departure as a bread crumb that Mueller’s part of the investigation may be coming to an end. Which is far from saying the totality of the investigation is over – far from it, I think.
Personally, I have never doubted that Mueller has the conspiracy aspect of the investigation nailed down, with or without Manafort. The obstruction aspect has occurred every single day in full view of the public, so that part is comparatively easy.
I’ve been waiting for the “big day” for quite some time. Tomorrow is a pretty good guess. Based on the tea leaves and as the magic 8-Ball might say, “Signs point to yes.”
Good god, I hope so.
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Trump had that whole thing about the bust of Churchill in the Oval Office, so that’s cool.
I suspect - or at least hope - that Judge Jackson will be less lenient. There exists the potential for concurrent sentences, I suppose, but we’ll see.
And aren’t SDNY sitting on a pile of potential Manafort charges? I assumed they were waiting to see how the Virginia and DC cases panned out as there’s no point charging a 70-year-old man already facing a fifteen-year sentence. But if four years is all he gets? One suspects NY will start the wheels turning on their case.
Coming into court in a wheelchair was good for a few more.
Ah justice in this country. It is anything but.
For comparison remember the black, poor woman in Texas who was sentenced tofive years in prison for voting while on probation?
Then you have the white, multimillionaire who committed two counts of bank fraud, five counts of tax fraud and one count of failing to declare a foreign bank account and gets a little shy of four years in prison despite sentencing guidelines calling for 20+ years.
So much justice…
The take I saw a few times online, that I think I mostly agree with, is: four years in prison is not nothing, but we’re so accustomed in the US to seeing people get life-destroying sentences for minor things, that four years sounds like a free ride. We shouldn’t sentence white collar criminals the same as we sentence other criminals. We should sentence everyone the way we sentence white collar criminals.
Could the judge be auditioning for the Supreme Court? What an ass.
Back to Mueller, I find it hard to believe he’d avoid a March 15 conclusion just because of the Ides of March thing. I do believe the Don Jr, Ivanka, and Jared are going to be indicted as Mueller’s last act because surely Don Sr will fire him, consequences be damned. I for one can’t wait to see Ivanka rock her orange jumpsuit with designer heels.
I dunno. A burglar steals from at most a couple dozen people taking – what – five figures worth of stuff while a fraudster steals millions of dollars from thousands of people, a life-changing impact. The punishment should be commensurate and I say this as someone who had been burgled.
Now, someone who physically injures a person or threatens with a weapon (never mind using one) deserves to be put away a long, long time.
Well, a pardon would take that away, right?
I plead ignorance. I thought that a pardon recipient had to admit guilt, but I sure can be wrong.
If he weren’t in his late 70s I might be inclined to agree.
OTOH, several of the talking heads I heard last night indicated that the judge tends to go easy on white collar crimes (one of them cited a case where the perp got seven months). I imagine there are people going through his history with the proverbial fine tooth comb to see if Manafort’s sentence is out of line with similar cases; absent such evidence I’m hesitant to ascribe an ulterior motive aside for his distaste for special prosecutors, which was obvious at several points during the trial.
Doesn’t make him any less of an ass.
47 months, 47 years, doesn’t matter. With the upcoming sentencing, and the possibility of state charges, this guy will die in prison.
Ellis is getting a hard time from a lot of people, and unfairly, in my view. He has a point that Manafort deserves leniency as a first-time offender (this being the first time he ever committed fraud on a massive scale over a span of many years) with no criminal history (up until the point where he was finally caught) who has led an otherwise blameless life (aside from these and all the other crimes he committed).
Add to that the fact that he’s elderly (nearing the end of his long life as an unrepentant career criminal who got off scot-free for decades) with health problems (cry me a fuckin’ geyser) and it’s clear that Ellis made the right call.
This is a great day for justice, and I’ve never been more proud to be an American.
Manaforts sentence seems entirely reasonable.
The examples cites in opposition only make me feel that the United States needs to stop having such draconian laws, not tha5 Manafort should be sent down for longer.
Part of the outrage is about the judge stating that Manafort lived a “blameless life”.