Throughout the entire Mueller investigation, Donald Trump and his band of criminal cronies have claimed that the probe would not yield any fruit because none of them have done anything wrong. They have sung this refrain over and over again, even as evidence to the contrary comes to light. Well, sirs, if you haven’t done anything wrong, why are you allegedly tampering with witnesses?
On Friday, a federal judge ordered Paul Manafort—Trump’s former campaign manager—to jail on charges that he tampered with witnesses while out on bail awaiting his trial next month on federal conspiracy and money-laundering charges.
The Washington Post reports that U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson told Manafort: “You have abused the trust placed in you six months ago. The government motion will be granted and the defendant will be detained.”
Jackson said that locking up Manafort was “an extraordinarily difficult decision,” but she was left with no choice after he allegedly contacted witnesses in the case and tried to get them to lie to investigators.
Again, I ask, why would witnesses need to lie to investigators if y’all have done nothing wrong?
I digress.
Manafort’s attorney Richard Westling implored the judge not to send his client to jail, since it was not required by law and doing so “will create more challenges for the defense, which already faces trial in two courts.”
Hmm. Isn’t that something he should have gone over with his client? His client created this situation. The judge is simply responding to his client’s alleged actions.
Manafort had been on house arrest with electronic monitoring since being indicted Oct. 27. He had been asking to end the house arrest and be allowed to post a $10 million bond. The 69-year-old has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. His attorneys deny that he tampered with witnesses and claim that the prosecution has made up the charges in an attempt to get Manafort to flip on Trump and the rest of his associates.
Of course his co-conspirator your president could not resist saying something about the news on Twitter:
According to the Post, Trump told reporters earlier Friday that Manafort “has nothing to do with our campaign, but I tell you I feel a little badly about it. They went back 12 years to get things that he did 12 years ago.”
He then added that Manafort—who was his campaign manager during the 2016 Republican National Convention—only “worked for me for a very short period of time.”
Manafort’s trial on charges that he failed to register in the United States as a lobbyist for a foreign government will begin in September. Next month, he goes on trial in federal court in Virginia for related tax- and bank-fraud charges that were brought against him after prosecutors reviewed his financial information.
I will ask this one more time: if you and all your little friends haven’t done anything wrong, why are you allegedly tampering with witnesses? This seems like a huge risk for someone to take who already has a ton of federal charges against him.
And he’s still not flipping.
Paul Manafort is who Tammy Wynette was talking about when she sang “Stand by Your Man.”