Jury tampering?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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White person = very good person
Black person = dumb dog
That pretty much is the basic life philosophy of Donald Trump and his followers.
.
Nah, the jury is not supposed to be watching tv or reading the news.
THis is just more stupidity.
I think BooMan’s idea is not that Trump is “tampering” by telling them what to do — but that they’ve got a crooked juror and Trump knows about it, which means a mistrial, and Trump (being incapable of shutting up about the secret plans) is paving the way for this by announcing his support.
(Basically a “Junior Soprano” scenario.)
If that is true and the judiciary system has been THAT compromised that badly, we are in so much deeper shit than we thought we were.
Otherwise, the perception war in the public square is all Trump has anymore.
Trump knows that the verdict night’s media is only going to report “Jury finds X; Trump says Manafort is a good person. Who knows what is true….if ONLY SOMEONE was paid to figure this stuff out and let us know the facts of the case!”
And his army of reprogrammable meatbag Republican voters need to know the talking point for that night’s Twitter and Facebook trolling.
60 million Americans chose to vote for a patently obvious, full blown ignoramus for president. I’m not sure how much deeper one can get. But I get your point.
Well, IMO, 128+ million Americans voted for a patently obvious, full blown ignoramus for President, but I agree with you.
. . . to” cannot be assumed to equal “are”, especially in the scenario of a rogue, Trumpite juror (with visions of “jury nullification” dancing in his/her head?). Whom Trump is presumably addressing with this jury-tampering attempt, if that’s what it is.
Any judge’s order to the contrary notwithstanding.
Very Roy Cohn.
AG
More like jury intimidation
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/manafort-trial-judge-declines-to-release-jurors-names-over-t
hreats
Also very Roy Cohn.
AG
Besides the potential for bribing/threatening individual jurors, the concern here is that HE’S THE HEAD OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH OF THE GOVERNMENT, WHICH HAS SOMETHING TO DO PROSECUTING CRIMES.
If the Judge said, “That Manafort, he’s getting a bum rap,” in the hearing of the jury, we’d all agree that that was over the line. The idea is that this is of a kind with that, since in theory Drumpf is the head of the government…(or so we are all pretending to believe).
Just because we aren’t witnessing a Saturday night massacre doesn’t mean we aren’t embroiled in a massacre. Trump’s massacre is ongoing and daily.
His cronies learned from the Saturday Night Massacre. They’re packing the courts, shuffling off their opponents in government, and beefing up their police forces. They’re counting on a good bit of nullification, but even without that, it’s possible that by the time Mueller delivers, they’ll be ready to quash it, and the bureaucracy will go along with it.
It’ll be up to us. But then, it always was.
No question that he is jury tampering and, in this case, this is something lifetime criminal Donald J Trump knows a lot about. Look, even if Manafort is twice convicted then sequentially pardoned, he loses his 5th amendment rights. This is more important in the second case, which is sort of closer to the campaign. In any event, Manafort has been involved with Trump long before the campaign and is of major use in the money laundering side of things. Likely he made use of the Bank of Cyprus siphoning of funds to set up shell companies for Trump investments. At least.
Don’t believe the Russians trusted Manafort or Gates with their money. Manafort owed 20 million and Gates was stealing from Manafort. Moving money from Cyprus bank to the donald would be entrusted to someone working at the bank……Wibur?
Certainly possible, but more likely some Trumptard or Teabagger on the jury.
Ever been on a jury? I was and I was the only one wearing a suit so they elected me foreman. I did NOT want the job. So I had to be impartial and respect all viewpoints no matter how naive or wacky.
After that, I report to any jury summons without the coat and tie.
This is why juries get sequestered. The judge can’t control what Trump or anyone else says; he can control, at least to an extent, what jurors can see or hear.
The judge in the Manafort case has exhibited seriously anti-prosecution attitudes on several occasions, to the point of real unprofessional behavior. That he chose not to sequester the jury in such a high-profile case is in line with this outlook; and at 78 years of age, it’s likely time for him to hang up his robe.
Well, we are long past the point of expecting responsible behavior from the unqualified conman that the incompetent white electorate thought would be just wonderful as a prez. Of course fascist Trumper is yapping about how improper it would be to convict his campaign manager (“such a good person!”), and of course the useless corporate media blats this manipulative shit out into the “discourse” while not asking the conman any question about what he thought of, say, the actual evidence.
And this doddering GOoPer judge appears incompetent as well, expressing amazement that the country would be so interested in a trial involving Der Trumper’s campaign manager[!] This after we hear that there have been death threats made to the (non-sequestered?) jury. So incompetence and malevolence reigns.
One of the first things to go in a collapsing democracy is the judicial system, as authoritarian movements (like American “conservatism”) have to have control of a perverted “rule of law”. The authoritarian strongman obviously has to have the ability to punish any political opponents while ensuring amnesty/protection for lawbreaking courtiers, party-men, fellow grifters and flunkies.
Prepare for the mistrial.
I don’t understand the lack of sequestering.
I was on a jury considering a case involving two homeless guys for petty theft. Not consequential to anyone but them. Prosecutors made a rickety case such that we all felt the guys were guilty of something related to theft, but not of the charges and so 5 days of arguing ensued, under sequester.
We ended the deadlock on the 4th evening when the guard overseeing us let us go into the hotel bar together, which Im sure he was not supposed to do, and everyone got drunk, started compromising and making deals, which was strictly wrong.
One of our problems was that we had been told we could not discuss lesser charges until we found the suspects not guilty of the higher ones.
So technically nobody could make a trade and say: look he’s not guilty of 1st degree, but don’t worry, we plan on punishing him with either 2nd or 3rd. We weren’t supposed to do that, but in the bar we did, and the people who wanted be sure they’d do some time, were then satisfied.
But here, its not even a matter of jurors looking at the news, the opportunity to discuss the case with loved ones who have not heard all the evidence will likely make them come to a resolution faster. I bet it comes soon, given this.
It could also be that they are really scrupulous, and there are a lot of charges to consider.
. . . [Perhaps one of the local whiz-kids can embed it?]:
Medicare-for-All Cost Projection Comparison in One Graph
The few hundred non-wonk-speak accompanying words provide plenty of value-added, though.
Bottom line:
Agreed, a no-brainer.
The other interesting wrinkle: The projections were produced by the Koch-funded Mercatus glibertarian spin-tank. The findings were framed deceptively to fool “journalists” into focusing on the increase in federal spending to accomplish the improvements quoted above instead of the projected $2-Trillion decrease in total healthcare spending (relative to status quo) under Bernie’s plan over a decade.
This initially worked beautifully.
The Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media initially covered it exactly as the Kochs/Mercatus planned. (I’ve said it before and, alas, will probably have ample occasions to say it again: the only subject area the Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media are worse at covering than economics is science.)
Then some people who could read, think, and understand read the report, and unearthed the buried lede that the country would save $2T under Bernie’s Medicare-for-All proposal. (Bernie even made a video thanking the Kochs for the positive support the report provided.)
Then, most pathetically of all, Mercatus successfully got to and spun the so-called fact-checkers, getting them to pretend Bernie had somehow “cherry-picked” or misrepresented the facts. (WaPo’s Kessler had to correct three factual errors in his so-called “fact-check”!)
Really hard to believe sometimes how Worse-Than-Useless (i.e., not just inadequately informing, but actually mis-informing . . . causing a net negative in the possibility of “informed consent of the governed” . . . making us collectively stupider/more ignorant) the Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media can be.
Yes, with a high likelihood. Take the probability that any one of them (1) hears something, (2) is persuadable by Trump (ugh), and (3) doesn’t think (1) and (2) are important enough to admit and we have a tampered jury.