Manafort trial Day 14: Jury ‘scared’ as it heads home without a verdict. By Daren Samuelson.
Paul Manafort’s trial will stretch into a fourth week, as jurors headed home Friday without reaching a verdict for the second straight day and the judge overseeing the case alluded to “threats” the jury may be receiving.
Seven news organizations sught access to sealed materials related to the trial that would have publicly identified the jurors. The judge, telling the courtroom that jurors were “scared” and “afraid”, did not release their names.
Democrats Frighten Manafort Jurors, by John Hinderaker.
The case that Bob Mueller has brought against Paul Manafort has nothing to do with Donald Trump or the 2016 election. It is irrelevant to any significant political issue. But Democrats worry that Mueller’s prosecution of Manafort for years-ago tax evasion may fail, thereby making a laughingstock of the special counsel investigation in which they have invested so much. What happens when Democrats are afraid they may lose a political battle? Things get nasty. …
Why do you suppose seven news organizations — all liberal, presumably — wanted to know who the jurors are and where they live? They are worried that the jury, having heard the evidence, may not render the “right” verdict, i.e., the one that helps the Democratic Party.
So they want to know who the jurors are so they can apply pressure on them through mob action, newspaper denunciations, online harassment and so on. This is how today’s Democratic Party operates. If the jury fails to render the Democrats’ preferred verdict, what do you suppose Maxine Waters will suggest Democrats should do to the jurors if they venture out in public?
Manafort’s Purge Trial, by Roger Simon.
[Manafort’s] trial — no matter how it turns out — in its underpinnings resembles nothing so much as a Stalinist purge trial. It is political, self-serving and sadistic. Manafort is being purged — for life, if the prosecution gets its way.
Lest you think I am overstating, it’s worth considering that countries have unique traditions. … Here that oppression appears to be coming from a pervasive — almost enforced in the sense that it is a “given” — conformity among large portions of our government, the Democratic Party, many corporations, the mainstream media with hundreds of newspapers writing anti-Trump editorials in unison, the academy, the entertainment industry, and, now, most ominously, social media, all of which are dominated by nearly identical worldviews. …
The Trump/Russia investigation then becomes the natural outgrowth of this new conformity, a warning to cooperate, to actually conform. Thus the trial of Paul Manafort then becomes the first show trial of our own incipient version of covert Stalinism or Stalinisme sans Gulag. …
Although it’s clearly a lever to destroy Trump, in the larger sense the Manafort trial is meant to teach that lesson, to warn the public at large not to stray from the traditional and dominant view, even if that changes. They must accept it anyway.
Who would want to work for the Republican Party, if this is what is going to befall you? If he hadn’t briefly worked for Trump, Manafort would have just been given an adverse tax ruling and a fine.
