ok this mother****** better hope they throw away the key or I swear to god I will HUNT HIM DOWN

Deleted a post because ponied by LostOstrich on ostrich jacket.

The judge interrupted the prosecutor twice within the first minute. That is not a great sign. This judge has made comments before about this case that kind of indicate how he feels about it. Jurors pick up on that. It is much harder to win a case as a prosecutor when the judge is against you. Also, one of the articles I read indicated the prosecutor read his opening statement to the jury. WTF? I can’t believe that’s true, that’s like super amateur bush league stuff. I don’t know prosecutor’s that would “read” an opening statement if they were trying a misdemeanor bench trial, let alone something of this magnitude. It’s not that hard to memorize an opening when you know your case. I have no idea what to make of that and hope the article was wrong.

I'm becoming quite concerned about this judge after what jman said and reading a little of the news today...

From CNN's live blog:

lol soros wtf

Avert your eyes:

So, I haven't paid attention to this because the experts all seemed to agree that Manafort was toast, largely because there would be explicit records of transactions and so on to prove culpability, otherwise prosecutors wouldn't bring the case.

In light of that, is it normal that the first two days of trial seem to have focused on Manafort's lavish spending habits? A common strategy to attack the defendant's character before releasing the details? Or a bad sign they might not actually have many incriminating records?

It touches upon three issues:

1. Lavish spending largely negates a "I didn't realize I was making that much money" defense on the tax evasion counts

2. Prosecutors are showing that much of the lavish spending was paid for via wire transfers from off-shore accounts which will be argued was part of the tax evasion / money launderding scheme

3. Vendors of laving spending items said they dealt directly with Manafort, Manafort personally picked out the items, Manafort supplied the vendors with the wire transfer account information, etc., which, of course, largely negates the "Rick Gates did it all" defense.

Good stuff, thanks.

And, of course, any jury would recognize that $15k for a pimped out members only jacket is a crime, at least in the eyes of God.

Picture Paul Manafort trying to pull off that jacket, and a salesman telling him, "Yes sir, that's totally you!" right before he plunks down 15 grand.

Just the best people.

It will just take one Trump supporter to slip on the jury to hang this "witch hunt!"

How do trials like this usually play out when politics play such a large role in the minds of the jurors? Given the location of the jury pool it's almost impossible 12 Trumpkins slipped through so I don't think an Oregon style jury nullification is in play. What happens if there are a few not guilty votes who won't give in because of their politics though? Does the judge demand they continue deliberating for months until someone gives in? Does the government run the trial again if the jury is hung? How often does that happen anyway?

not directly political, but oklahoma tried a cop, that hunted down his daughters black boyfriend using police equipment and shot him then drove to a park ditched the gun and called his lawyer, 4 times because they kept getting jurors that thought it was totally fine for the cop to do this.

so i assume if they got a hung jury like that they would weigh the options and probably re-try him. i however am not sure if they were trying to use this conviction as a plea leverage for his next trial, but that may become a factor if that is the case.

So, it's a tax fraud case. His lavish spending habits are direct evidence of the fact that he's evading taxes (prosecutor's compare the lifestyle he is leading and the spending he is doing versus his "declared" income is totally standard in this type of case). Again, the fact that the judge is attacking the prosecutor's so hard on this is not great, and a little perplexing. Anything can happen in a jury trial, and we're just getting media snippets so it is really hard to tell what is going on, but there is no such thing as a sure thing with criminal trials. At the end of the day, you never know what a jury is going to do.

I think this is actually a pretty likely outcome unfortunately. We are just so polarized right now, and all it takes is one. No way this jury doesn't realize this is tied to the trump campaign and the special counsel, jurors aren't that stupid.

I disagree that someone on the Alexandria jury is likely to nullify. 11 people can be pretty persuasive convincing a 12th, and most people cave to social pressure. Even if they did hang, best case is a retrial, and he still has to deal with the upcoming DC trial. He needs to bink a two outer twice in a row.

Judge seems like a total attention whore douche.

He had a choice to combine the trials? Maybe he did that to apply pressure to Trump for a pardon as he stays in the media cycle longer. Or just fu to Mueller. Or he's nuts.

short-sleeve snakeskin jacket, baller af

I need to see some pics of the $21k watch. If I didn't know better, I would be assuming it's a leopard daytona but those are more than $21k.

I kinda don't hate the snakeskin jacket. Wouldn't pay a dime over $9k tho.

Or you could just go big with the jacket.


https://twitter.com/luxury/status/1025213633884766209

I wouldn't buy either if I found them in a thrift store and they fit me like a dream. Lol @ spending over $1k on an article of clothing that is not a wedding dress.