Floundering Paul Manafort reduced to throwing things at the wall
In the two weeks since Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sent to jail, he’s proceeded to lose the two key courts rulings that he and his legal team had been banking on. The first was a failed motion to have the charges thrown out, under the premise that Robert Mueller didn’t have the authority to charge him. The second was a failed motion to have the key evidence thrown, under the premise that it was obtained improperly. Having struck out, Manafort is now reduced to throwing things at the wall.
As things stand, Paul Manafort essentially cannot win at trial. There’s a mountain of evidence against him, and not one credible legal expert thinks he stands a chance. Now that the judge in the case has made clear that the trial will happen, and that the most important evidence will be used against him, he has little left to go on. Accordingly, his latest moves over the past couple days are equal parts desperate and absurd.
For instance, Manafort has filed a motion asking the judge to let him out of jail, for no good reason, just two weeks after she sent him to jail for the duration of the trial. This will obviously be thrown out. Manafort then claimed that prosecutors leaked evidence against him to the Associated Press; the real story turned out to be that the Associated Press uncovered the evidence and turned it over to prosecutors.
Paul Manafort and his legal team have no good options left to try, yet his lawyers are still getting paid to do something, so Manafort and his team are going to keep throwing things at the wall in the hope that something randomly sticks. But all of these efforts are going to be rejected. Unless Manafort cuts a plea deal, he will go on trial next month, he will remain in jail throughout the trial, and he’ll almost certainly be found guilty. More importantly, Mueller is going to use the Manafort trial to prove Donald Trump guilty in the court of public opinion.
