His red neck supporters will vote for him in mass to give him another term and keep him out of jail for another four years.
dammit
Manafort DC sentencing today.
Twitter is on pins and needles. Random quotes from random accounts. No links. Deal.
LOL, Judge to Manny: "Why? Not to support a family, but to sustain a lifestyle that was a ostentatiously opulent and extravagantly lavish –more houses a family can enjoy, more suits than one man can wear.”
Judge: “He pled guilty to conspiring to corruptly persuade another person — two people — with the intent to influence their testimony in an official proceeding. And which official proceeding? This one. The case against Mr. Manafort himself.”
Judge: “Saying I’m sorry I got caught is not an inspiring plea for leniency…"
Jackson: “This defendant is not public enemy number one, but he’s also not a victim either.”… “It is not a vindication of or an indictment of anyone who is the subject of investigation by the special counsel.”
“The question of whether anyone in the Trump campaign “conspired or colluded with” the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election “was not presented in this case. Period,” Jackson said.
Judge: “It is hard to overstate the number of lies and amount of money involved, Thirty offshore accounts. Three countries, and all with no justification.”
Manafort: “Your honor, I’m just a caveman. Your words about treason and me being a piece of shit frighten and confuse me.”
(That last one might not be 100% accurate.)
Jackson: “The defendant’s insistence that none of this should be happening to him… that the prosecution is misguided and excessive and invalid … is just one more thing that is inconsistent with a genuine acceptance of responsibility.”
(meantime, I’m joking with Harry Turtledove about the accusative case. Twitter can be weird.)
Judge: “There’s no question this defendant knew better, and he knew exactly what he was doing.”
Paul Manafort has been sentenced to:
- Count 1: 60 months, with 30 months concurrent with EDVA sentence
- Count 2: 13 months, to run consecutive to count 1 and the EDVA sentence
So…
47mths
+30
+13
90 months in jail, or 7.5 years in total.
As I said, he will die in prison.
He will be pardoned. Perhaps not now but as Trump exits the stage, he will pardon Paulie.
You can bet on it. Jan 20, 2021 in the early morning hours, he will leave the White House and not attend Biden’s inauguration. Just before leaving the Oval Office, he’ll sign a stack of pardons. One of them will be for Manafort, one will be for himself.
In what way would that benefit Trump? Because that’s really his only motivation for doing anything.
IMHO, 7.5 years is a light sentence for Manafort’s conduct, but most of that is due to Ellis’s departure from sentencing guidelines for no good reason.
I take comfort in the belief that The Law™ is not done with Manafort, either at the state or federal levels. The latter may have to wait until the scourge in the Oval has been removed.
Yeah, Trump’s not going to pardon Manafort for Manafort’s benefit. However, Manafort is clearly withholding secrets - if Manafort realizes he’s not going to get a pardon, he will surely reveal what he knows in order to get a sentence reduction?
Let’s not forget that if it weren’t for that one MAGAt, Paulie would have been convicted on 8 more counts.
Why, look!! (NY Times) I was right! 
Even if Dotard, the First of Individuals, pardons him today, this keeps Manafort in jail. Nice move.
Luckily (?) for us, he can’t pardon himself.
It’s adorable that you think that will stop him from doing it anyway.
Whether he can or not is debatable. But I’m pretty sure that won’t stop him from trying.
Reagan was elected 6 years after Nixon left, by a landslide. It was mainly because Carter was seen as weak in how he handled the Iran crisis, so it stands to reason to say it will take as many years as the post-Trump president can manage without totally screwing the pooch.
Very smart and strategic. It neutralizes Manafort for the foreseeable future and removes any lingering impetus for Trump to pardon him. There’s no advantage to Trump for doing so at all, and he would pay a high political price to he do it.
I expect to see more coordination of this sort re the “kids” and others soon. Once those individuals are removed from Trump’s pardon reach, Mueller can proceed apace with the rest of his prosecutions – even if it isn’t Mueller or his team doing the actual prosecuting.
Did anyone else notice how the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles executed on their Operation Varsity Blues RICO case? When they go, they go all at once. Fiftyish folks arrested simultaneously, indictments all filed at the same time with ongoing investigations as they make their way through the first wave. A lesson there for the Trump types who participated in “collusion,” I think.
Also would like to note that Felicity Huffman was given the Roger Stone treatment - early morning @ her house, people asleep, guns drawn, loud voices shouting. Perhaps Mr. Stone’s arrest wasn’t so unusual after all.
Manafort’s lawyer claims that two lawyers have ruled that there was no collusion with Russia. Not ruling that there is is not the same as ruling that there isn’t.
I assume you meant judges. Never heard of lawyers issuing rulings.
Right, Judges. My fingers can’t think.