{"id":178993,"date":"2018-06-24T20:11:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T01:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/06\/24\/a-twist-in-the-russia-investigation\/"},"modified":"2018-06-24T20:11:00","modified_gmt":"2018-06-25T01:11:00","slug":"a-twist-in-the-russia-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/06\/24\/a-twist-in-the-russia-investigation\/","title":{"rendered":"A Twist in the Russia Investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

It appears that both the prosecution and defense have filed motions to exclude Manafort’s time as Trump’s campaign chairman from the trial<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and special counsel Robert Mueller have finally found something they can agree on.<\/span>

<\/span>Mueller\u2018s prosecutors and Manafort\u2018s defense team filed separate motions with a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Friday asking to block lawyers at an upcoming trial for the longtime lobbyist and political consultant from mentioning his stint at the helm of the Trump campaign in 2016.<\/span>

<\/span>The requests came in court filings spurred by Manafort\u2018s looming trial next month on charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and failing to report overseas bank accounts.<\/span>

<\/span>Mueller\u2019s team went first, asking U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis to prevent Manafort\u2018s defense from arguing to jurors that he was targeted for prosecution because of his role in Donald Trump\u2019s presidential bid.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Manafort\u2018s defense followed up a short time later with an even broader motion<\/a> asking to bar any discussion at all of the defendant\u2018s role in the Trump campaign, as well as all mention of Mueller\u2018s mandate to investigate potential collaboration between Trump\u2018s team and Russia. \u201cEvidence or argument relating to Mr. Manafort\u2018s work for then-candidate Trump\u2019s campaign in 2016 or the Special Counsel\u2019s investigation of the campaign\u2019s alleged collusion with the Russian government is wholly irrelevant to whether Mr. Manafort\u2019s personal income tax returns were false, whether he willfully failed to file reports of foreign accounts, and whether he conspired to commit, or committed, bank fraud,\u201c Manafort\u2018s attorneys wrote. <\/span>

<\/span>The defense lawyers\u2019 motion also evinced concern that their client could become the victim of anti-Trump bias among potential jurors.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Basically, the case comes down to Manafort being a corrupt son of a bitch, though one wonders how he is really different from any of the other international lobbyists in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n

The other twist is that The Nation<\/i> magazine just published an article debunking the whole “Russiagate” thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I find it interesting because The Nation<\/i> is the last place where I would expect to find such an article.<\/p>\n

I’m still guessing that it will be the coverup, and not the underlying crime, that will end up having real repercussions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It appears that both the prosecution and defense have filed motions to exclude Manafort’s time as Trump’s campaign chairman from the trial: The former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and special counsel Robert Mueller have finally found something they can agree on.Mueller\u2018s prosecutors and Manafort\u2018s defense team filed separate motions with a federal court in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[513,368,573,407,405],"class_list":["post-178993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-campaign-finance","tag-corruption","tag-donald-trump","tag-justice","tag-presidential-campaign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178993"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}