Guilty guilty guilty guilty guilty guilty guilty guilty
Well well well. How about that.
A jury has found former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty on tax and bank fraud charges — a major if not complete victory for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as he continues to investigate the president’s associates.
The jury convicted Manafort on eight of the 18 counts against him and said it was deadlocked on the other 10. U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis declared a mistrial on those charges.
What do you know.
President Trump reacted to the verdict by denouncing Mueller’s investigation.
“It doesn’t involve me … it’s a very sad thing,” the president said after arriving in West Virginia for a political rally, adding that the Manafort case “has nothing to do with” Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Sad.
Manafort’s possible prison sentence wasn’t immediately clear, but legal experts said he likely faces more than a decade in prison under federal sentencing guidelines.
The verdict comes as President Trump has stepped up his criticism of Mueller’s investigation, publicly criticizing it on a weekly basis. As the Manafort trial began, Trump called for the probe to be shut down immediately.
Weekly? Is that all? Not alternate daily?
The 18 charges in the Manafort trial centered around Manafort’s personal finances, and had little to do with the special counsel’s mandate of probing Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates conspired with those efforts.
But the trial was the first to emerge from Mueller’s probe, and as such it marked a significant public test of his work.
The jury deliberated for four days before announcing its verdict.
…
Manafort faces a second trial in September in Washington D.C., on charges he failed to register as a lobbyist for the Ukraine government, and conspired to tamper with witnesses in that case. Manafort has been in jail since June as a result of the witness tampering charges.
What he did in Ukraine is truly awful.
Oh dear. Trump’s not having a very good day, is he? His former campaign chairman is going to jail, his former personal lawyer just pleaded guilty to (amongst other things) two counts of campaign finance law violations that he claims were at the direction of ‘a federal candidate for office’. And Cohen’s lawyer has come right out and named Trump directly, just in case any of the MAGA crowd wanted to claim he was referring to some other candidate for office. Trump’s rally tonight in WV is going to be an epic meltdown.
The GOP’s having a bad day too. In addition to the above, Duncan Hunter and his wife just pleaded guilty to charges of campaign finance fraud.
It’s almost as if the entire party is made up of grifters and criminals who’ve skated past the law for years but now it’s all catching up to them…
Wait, if it doesn’t involve him, and has nothing to do with Russian interference in the US electoral process, why is finding someone guilty of tax and bank fraud charges sad? Catching criminals is a good thing, right? Someone who claims to be strong on law and order should be happy that the system is working!
Didn’t you know, Karellen? Tax criminals are only engaging in civil disobedience against unfair laws that make wealthy people pay taxes. Taxes are meant for poor people, and any law that suggests otherwise is clearly and blatantly a bad law; they need to rebel.
/s