Judge Thomas Selby Ellis III, a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987, handed down an extraordinarily lenient sentence on Paul Manafort Thursday evening. While the federal guidelines called for a sentence of 19.5 to 24.5 years in prison, Judge Ellis declared that this was far too harsh and gave Manafort a mere 47 months, including time already served. In words that will live in infamy, he said that Manafort had “lived an otherwise blameless life.”
It’s been clear since the pretrial stage that Judge Ellis was hostile to the prosecution and believed that the charges against Manafort were trumped up in an effort to force the former presidential campaign chairman into cooperating in the Mueller probe. Once the trial began, things got even worse.
The federal judge in the trial of U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort expressed contrition on Thursday to jurors after berating prosecutors for allowing a witness to watch the proceedings, despite having given his earlier approval.
The rare apology by U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis surprised observers in his Alexandria, Virginia courtroom, who have watched the judge repeatedly criticize the government’s handling of the case while giving leeway to Manafort’s lawyers.
“It appears I may well have been wrong,” Ellis said as the trial went into its eighth day. “But like any human, and this robe doesn’t make me anything other than human, I sometimes make mistakes.”
Ellis had chastised prosecutors for allowing IRS agent Michael Welch to be in court before he testified on Wednesday, saying he did not like witnesses present before taking the stand. When prosecutor Uzo Asonye challenged Ellis, the judge barked: “Don’t do that again. When I exclude witnesses, I mean everybody.”
Throughout the prosecution’s presentation of the case, Judge Ellis constantly pressured them to hurry up, leading to widespread criticism. Here is how Nancy Gertner, a retired U.S. District Court judge in Massachusetts, described Ellis’s behavior in the Washington Post:
It is not unusual for judges to intervene in court proceedings from time to time — to direct the lawyers to move the case along or to admonish them that evidence is repetitive…[but] the performance of U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III in the trial of Paul Manafort on bank fraud and tax evasion charges has been decidedly unusual.
During the trial, Ellis intervened regularly, and mainly against one side: the prosecution. The judge’s interruptions occurred in the presence of the jury and on matters of substance, not courtroom conduct. He disparaged the prosecution’s evidence, misstated its legal theories, even implied that prosecutors had disobeyed his orders when they had not…
…The judge continually interrupted the prosecution’s questioning of witnesses, prompting lead prosecutor Greg Andres to pointedly note: “Your honor stops us and asks us to move on.” Ellis pressed the prosecution to rush through testimony about important financial documents. He made critical comments about prosecution evidence and strategy — all in front of the jury.
That doesn’t even cover all of the egregious behavior Judge Ellis displayed. His interventions were were so lop-sided against the prosecution that there was real doubt about whether a conviction would be possible. One holdout juror refused to find Manafort guilty on 10 of the 18 charges against him, but the eight convictions were significant enough to lead the Probation Department to produce a presentence guideline report recommending the 19.5 to 24.5 years of incarceration that Ellis disparaged and ignored.
In fairness, Manafort had fewer problems in Ellis’s courtroom than in the courtroom of his other trial across the river where he will be sentenced next week. Judge Amy Berman Jackson of United States District Court for the District of Columbia had to contend with Manafort entering into a cooperation agreement with the Office of Special Counsel only to violate the terms and have the agreement revoked. In the Ellis case, the convictions were on five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account. In the Jackson case, Manafort pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, failing to register as a foreign agent, money laundering, witness tampering and making false statements. It wasn’t necessarily Judge Ellis’s job to punish Manafort for actions that were more in the DC jurisdiction. He wasn’t sentencing him for defrauding the country, acting as undeclared foreign agent, tampering with witnesses or reneging on a cooperation agreement. It wouldn’t be fair to jack up his sentence in two separate trials for the same set of crimes.
It probably wasn’t necessary to give Manafort twenty-plus years in prison for tax and bank fraud crimes even if the guidelines called for it. But it was quite another thing to give him fewer than four years, and then to rationalize it by saying that Manafort has lived a mostly blameless life. Anyone familiar with Manafort’s career and recent behavior could never honestly say that the man is beyond reproach. I mean, his own family doesn’t believe that.
By contrast, the Manafort daughters and their mother seemed much more unsettled about Paul Manafort’s work as a political consultant for Yanukovych’s Russia-backed Party of Regions, which is a subject of renewed interest among investigators probing possible links between Trump’s campaign and Russia.
In one March 2015 exchange that appears to be between the two sisters, Andrea Manafort seems to suggest that their father bore some responsibility for the deaths of protesters at the hands of police loyal to Yanukovych during a monthslong uprising that started in late 2013.
“Don’t fool yourself,” Andrea Manafort wrote. “That money we have is blood money.”
Even on a personal level, Manafort can be criticized more harshly than most people. In fact, his behavior towards his wife is so disgusting that most outlets won’t even report on it. If Judge Ellis had read Maya Gurantz’s article on this in the Los Angeles Review of Books, it’s hard to see how he could have characterized Manafort as a stand-up guy who deserves leniency.
In 2016 or early 2017, Paul Manafort’s 32-year-old daughter Andrea’s cell phone was hacked. A database containing hundreds of thousands of her purported text messages, many in conversation with her sister Jess, was released online in February 2017. Politico confirmed the veracity of enough of the texts to enter them into the public record.
Various excerpts have been used in every subsequent profile written on Manafort — Trump’s former campaign manager, a career Republican operative, and a lobbyist to foreign dictators — who currently sits in jail for bank fraud, tax fraud, obstruction of justice, and financial conspiracy with a foreign power. These articles quote Andrea and Jess contending with their father’s corruption (“He has no moral or legal compass”), what they believe was his active role in the murder of hundreds of Ukrainian protestors (“Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that / To send those people out and get them slaughtered”), his humiliatingly public affair as a sugar daddy to a much younger woman (“He got her A PRIVATE JET AT ONE POINT”), his role on Trump’s campaign (“He is refusing payment. Bc he doesn’t want to be viewed as Trump’s employee”), and their own tormented desire to free themselves from their family complicities (“Don’t fool yourself. That money we have is blood money.”).
Yet one cluster of texts never entered public discourse in the same way. For eight months after these texts were released online — an eon, in internet time — no one wrote about them. The sleaziest gossip outlets, which enthusiastically published other dirty details about Manafort (including his membership in BDSM sex clubs), wouldn’t touch it. Deep transparency conspiracy theorists didn’t Tweet about it. A March 2018 Atlantic profile on Manafort by Franklin Foer only very delicately alludes to the matter, commenting that, “after the exposure of his infidelity, his wife had begun to confess simmering marital issues to her daughters.”
That’s a rather dainty way to refer to over a decade of coercive and manipulative sexual behavior, in which Manafort allegedly forced his wife, vulnerable from having sustained brain damage after a near-death horseback riding accident years before, to engage in “gang bangs” with black men while he watched.
Manafort spoke to the court before his sentencing. He expressed some degree of remorse but refused to apologize for anything or to take responsibility for his actions. Judge Ellis expressed surprise at Manafort’s lack of contrition, and yet he still gave him approximately one-fifth of time recommended to him by the Probation Office.
I might be a little less outraged about this than others, but that’s mainly because I never thought twenty years was appropriate on these specific charges. I’m all for equal justice, so if others get the book thrown at them for tax and bank fraud then Manafort should too. But I think twenty year sentences should be reserved for crimes involving murder or serious bodily harm. I guess my problem is that I think we dole out unreasonably harsh sentences in this country, but it doesn’t bother me that Manafort’s sentence is less than some expected. This is especially true because I think he’ll get much less forgiveness in the DC case since it involves a conspiracy to defraud the country and multiple efforts to interfere with or obstruct the administration of justice. What matters is what Manafort gets in the end, and if he’s going to spend the next decade or two in prison, that’s appropriate for a man of his age who is guilty of these crimes.
Nonetheless, I believe Judge Ellis reduced the sentence by too much and for the wrong reasons. And I think he did real harm to the country because his decision badly undermined a lot of people’s faith in the justice system. It’s not just that Ellis created another example of a powerful and affluent and connected white man getting a slap on the wrist when the rest of us get no breaks whatsoever, but it also seemed to be motivated by partisan political considerations. It also should not be overlooked that Ellis’s performance as a judge in this case was at least as indefensible as his sentence.
We will have to wait to see what Judge Amy Berman Jackson does next week. Based on how she has conducted herself so far, I don’t expect her to do anything that would give rise to legitimate criticism.
We’re all trying to make sense of what just happened. I found Ellis’ references during the trial that he knew that the prosecution was only going after Manafort in order to get to Trump outright bizarre and then when Manafort’s lawyer exited the court today he commented that the ‘most important’ result of today was that there was no collusion proven. What?
My tv told me that the sentencing guidelines are based on cases across the country in an effort to level sentencing of crimes. That the SC did not recommend the length of sentencing but simply let the guidelines speak for the case made it even more peculiar that Ellis wasn’t punishing them but just tossing the guidelines out. On the optimistic side of this PM may have inadvertently done something for fellow felons across the nation in that this sentence may lower the averages. What a thought.
Oh yeah, someone said to me that the wheelchair was a nice touch, apparently it swayed the judge.
And for a judge who oversaw a mistrial on counts against Manafort where he then pleaded guilty to those same counts as part of his plea deal, you’d think he would have remembered that stain on his court in his sentencing.
I’m fine with 4 years for crimes like Manafort’s, at least when they’re removed from their context. However, not only do we have this same judge throwing the book at other defendents, we cannot remove Manafort’s crimes from the context of how he got his money to commit his bank and tax fraud crimes. He stole this money, he is directly responsible for deaths for this money. This money is, as his own daughter describes, “blood money”.
I mean, I guess more people will be disillusioned about the justice system from this case, but so many others in the opposite direction should have already brought about that realization.
I guarantee that if this were Obama’s campaign manager, every person in America would know all of these sleazy details.
Also, wasn’t the phony wheelchair bit in an episode of Law and Order?
Cheney and his wheel chair bit for Obama’s inauguration. “I injured myself moving boxes”, my ass.
Well, if it had been Obama’s campaign manager, this wonderful (Repub) jurist would have felt “compelled” to follow the (19 year) guidelines…
If lawn-order used it, they stole it!
Since I think people have too much faith in the justice system, I’m not sure how much harm Ellis actually did. IMO all he did was not bother to hide what usually happens. I probably would have given him 8.
I don’t see how people still have faith in it at this point. It just shows that people have either been playing Rip Van Winkle or just don’t care. I mean just look at Sacremento and Stephon Clark earlier this week. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And then there has been the white collar crime that hasn’t been prosecuted for the past 20 years at least. If this country took white collar crime seriously, Trump would have never considered running for President to begin with.
It’s strange to see people upset about the light sentence, when these crimes are so rarely investigated, let alone prosecuted. It would be interesting to see how many resources the Feds use for drug prosecutions vs bank fraud type prosecutions.
Does nobody remember the Clinton years? When it was shown how the Feds would do cocaine buys, and if you were black they did buy after buy until you exceeded a certain limit, and then the Feds prosecuted you as a distributor and the minimum was 10 years, but if you were white they busted you on the first buy and turned you over to the locals….where you got probation.
The result was ZERO white prosecutions in 10 years. The the Feds used the data to describe black men as thugs and drug dealers.
Sad to say, but for America, just his arrest was a step up, let alone a trial and conviction.
But what do I know…in my neighborhood I’m the crazy old dude that lives on the corner.
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Considering I was in elementary school for a solid chunk of the Clinton years…. I don’t remember that. It does strengthen my desire to purge the FBI.
At the same time was the long running scandal/scam where the Farm Bureau was responsible for approving loans for farmers every season, the money to be used for seeds, and to make it through the growing season. And loans if they had a bad crop, or prices dropped.
The problem was that the Bureau’s local representives were locals..usually bank managers or mayors, or agricultural salesmen, working as paid volunteers for the federal government. Of course in some localities that meant leaders in such reputable organizations as the KKK. So every black farmer through the doors was rejected, leading to farm failures, which meant white farmers could then pick that land for 10 cents on the dollar, paying a bribe to the Bureau volunteers.
This lead to a precipitous drop in black farm ownership, which the Bureau volunteers then used as an example of how black people were lazy and stupid.
Even after the lawsuits were successful, of course they never got their farms back…..and not one person was prosecuted, even the people in Washington who knew about the scam, and personally benefited from the bribes.
America…….MAGA!
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NPR dida detailed story about this a couple of years ago about these practices in NC, IIRC. Pretty awful behavior.
. . . live on corners see stuff, and get it.
I build stuff. These days that makes you extremely weird, particularly when my age.
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That’s just the thing. By winning, Cheeto Mussolini screwed the pooch. If he had won, this all would have been swept under the carpet and never talked about again.
Undermined my faith? Yeah, it did that and more. Of all the things that have happened under Trump I don’t remember ever being this angry, and more so knowing that Ellis, like all members of our elite, will live a consequence-free life.
Based on how Ellis conducted the trial, I was surprised he gave Manafort as much prison time as he did. Ellis spent a good part of the trial acting as a defense attorney, so a 75% downward departure from the sentencing guidelines was pretty much a given. Republicans are what they are, even when they are judges.
Tinfoil hat territory, but I wonder if someone with very powerful intelligence assets got to the judge about any of his own deep dark secrets…
I think Adam Silverman over at Balloon Juice put it best:
The emphasis is mine.
There is good work being done at ballon juice. It’s strange, on the one hand you have the comedic dog and cat show (with pictures!) by Cole, and then you have really solid health care and security/intelligence posts.
Cole has done tremendous work with recruitment and has personally come a LONG way. He shows what is possible.
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I commented there a few times, and was savaged for my lack of fealty to Obama and Clinton. Maybe I stumbled into some bad moments, but the comments section struck me as Twitter-levels of toxic.
They’re extremely toxic. It’s why I also stopped reading the blog. I do follow David Anderson and Cole, though.
Dont disagree but I left because the site format is like Trump levels of bad. Also because Cole barely posts anything now. I dudnt come there to read other people.
Wow, I’ve never gotten the toxicity at all and read that blog every day, as I do this one. They mostly don’t go for Bernie bros, and things get testy sometimes especially during Democratic primary seasons, but then that’s true of all of our progressive, Democratic leaning blogs. I remember how it was here during the Bernie vs Hillary era.
BJ’s front pagers are not only well-informed they’ve mostly got a great sense of humor and a way with words. Plus they’ve got some great commenters, including a lifelong Democratic female Ohioan who has more than her fair share of common sense and political wisdom.
Agree with all of this. We have no tolerance for Bernie Bros and other members of Our Progressive Betters.
Lots of pragmatic Dems in the comments section. As mentioned, if you’re not reading Silverman, Cracker and the guy does all the health care stuff, you’re missing out on some of the most astute analysis around.
I’m not trying to recruit. Or defend. The latter is pointless because as we all know in Lefty Blogistan, the only people we hate more than the Romans, er Republicans, are [Insert pet Liberal Blog You Hate here].
I think it’s much better now than even a couple years ago. The seriousness of some of the front page posts probably helps.
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I hesitated to bring up my experience….I read Balloon Juice but never, ever comment there – I’ve gotten some bizarre, angry responses to comments that I thought were straightforward and harmless, so I stay away from the comment section. It’s a pretty much closed community that don’t much cotton to outsiders.
While I do comment there occasionally, I’ve seen situations like yours where I thought that the commenter got really really misread. Of late, there’s been a few more troll types and it’s more difficult to distinguish the real trolls from the reltively new commenters who are not.
Ain’t that the truth! Once they were discussing Fantasy books, and I decided `seems friendly enough’ and gave my opinion.
Huh, no.
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I might’ve been in that same thread! I definitely got slammed in a ‘book chat’ type conversation once.
(Though in BJ’s defense, most of the times I got slammed was when I was being argumentative. But no more than would be utterly-unremarkable here. And the response was wild.)
(Also, are you a big fantasy reader? I read one of Sanderson’s doorstoppers recently and honestly can’t tell if it was good or just so long that it bludgeoned me into immersion.)
I highly recommend “David Anderson”‘s analysis of health care policy and outcomes over there. He’s very comprehensive and writes so the layperson can understand his analysis on a very complex subject. He’s a progressive but not a polemicist. Here, take a look.
This is a fabulous piece.
(The piece, and responses to it, expose the problem with the locution justice system. It tacitly reinforces the hopeful and reassuring illusion that our social/political system is actually regulated by the noble principle of justice. In fact, it’s a legal system. Ellis’s continuous miscarriage is just another moment that makes this obvious.)
The sentence didn’t undermine anything for me that hadn’t long since been undermined, when it comes to the “justice” system in this country. Paul Manafort got “rich white man justice,” the kind that you have to be rich, white and male to get. Draconian sentences are handed down damn near every day for far less serious crimes, news of which don’t see the light of day. People getting years in prison for being caught with a few joints or shoplifting. Some examples cataloged here:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/paul-manafort-twitter-reaction_n_5c81d35ae4b08d5b785fcfcb
As for Jackson, she’s allowed Stone to run amok with respect to that gag order. Its as if he’s begging to be locked up and yet Jackson allows him to remain free. I’ll have to take a wait and see perspective on her not going all rich white man on Manafort’s sentencing as well.
Its like when the militia seized the wildlife refuge. We were told over and over that it was handled the right way but in fact they all got off. The only one that got what he deserved was the guy that tried to shoot back.
What was outrageous is that this man who’s led a “blameless life” was a man whose own daughters describe him as an amoral monster:
He forced his wife to engage in “gang bangs” with black men while he watched. The daughters were “upset”.
This is just extreme spousal abuse. And THIS is the man whom this filthy hack of a Federal Judge says has led a “blameless life.”
The lobbyist for monster dictators like Jonas Savimbi.
He made a fortune from literally the worst human beings on the entire planet, sanitizing them, normalizing them and lobbying for them to receive foreign aid money so they could continue their murderous regimes unchecked.
He raped his wife and tortured her into obedience, in a classic example of Battering Syndrome. This is just another example of how horrible the 30 years of right-wing Court packing has become.
In their eagerness to push the most extremist right-wing judges onto the U.S. Courts, Republicans have had to hand pick some really bad human beings, because otherwise they might wind up with a “traitor” Justice like Harry Blackmun, who wrote Roe v. Wade, or David Souter who went “rogue.”
So, there’s been this emphasis on making sure that their judicial appointments are absolutely reliable right wing hacks. This is just another example.
Manafort is a rich white man, and a Conservative. And the Judge just didn’t want him prosecuted at all. His bias was evident all through the trial and now in sentencing he justified a 75% downward departure from the sentencing guidelines.
It’s all setting up for Trump to pardon him and for Fox News to exonerate him as a martyr and victim.
And a well-known political dirty trickster. I’m sure we ‘ve all seen the black and white photo of the triumvirate young GOP political tricksters since Roger Stone’s arrest. There is no way that Judge Ellis didn’t know all of this. This outcome is far more reflective of Judge Ellis lack of regard for the rule of law and his political biases than it is of anything else.
Looks like Ellis is the front runner for the Judge Julius Hoffman Award for Judicial Temperment and Performance.