Paul Manafort loses yet again

| 9:10 am EDT July 19, 2018
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This week we’ve seen circumstantial evidence that Paul Manafort may be negotiating a potential plea deal, even as Robert Mueller has made clear that he’s prepared to give immunity to unnamed witnesses against Manafort just to ramp up the pressure. Even as these storylines play out, Manafort just suffered a major loss – as part of an ongoing string of losses he’s suffered of late.

There’s such a mountain of evidence and witnesses against Paul Manafort, as things stand he has very little chance of prevailing at trial. So his defense strategy has been based around trying to get things thrown out before the trial begins. He tried to get the charges thrown out, on the premise that Mueller didn’t have the authority to charge him. He tried to get the evidence seized from his storage locker thrown out. He’s tried countless other motions. The judge has ruled against him on every one of these motions. Now it’s happened again.

This time around the judge ruled against Manafort’s motion to toss out the evidence seized from Manafort’s home. When a defense strategy like this one is employed, the legal team tends to begin with its strongest motions, and if those fail, moving on to weaker angles and more unrealistic legal stretches. At this point Manafort’s continuing losses are becoming predictable, because if any of his current motions were viable, his lawyers would have tried them earlier.

Of course it doesn’t help that Paul Manafort has already been caught conspiring with a Russian spy to tamper with the witnesses against him, which prompted the judge to revoke his bail and throw him in jail. Manafort’s subsequent antics then got him moved to a jail where the conditions are worse. Has any high profile defendant’s strategy ever failed this spectacularly before the start of the trial?