He Just Can’t Shuddup and I Deeply Appreciate That
Paul Manafort is a doozy. He really is.
He’s a wind-up whine box with a pack of lawyers who seem perplexed about the whole idea of going to court.
So now, after complaining about being put in solitary – which, by the way, is probably so Putin can’t have him killed inside the jail – we come to be alerted that Manafort is being treated like a VIP.
“Among the unique privileges Manafort enjoys at the jail are a private, self-contained living unit, which is larger than other inmates’ units, his own bathroom and shower facility, his own personal telephone, and his own workspace to prepare for trial,” prosecutors said in their filing. “Manafort is also not required to wear a prison uniform. On the monitored prison phone calls, Manafort has mentioned that he is being treated like a ‘VIP.’”
And then get this:
Mueller’s team also notified the court that Manafort has apparently developed a “workaround” for sending emails from jail, which is forbidden at Warsaw, by reading and drafting messages on a separate laptop transported in and out of jail by his lawyers.
Well, that solves any problems in preparing for trial because his lawyers will be in jail with him.
I won’t actually travel to or through any of the rebellious states, so going myself to Virginia is out of the question, but Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw strikes me as an atypical Federal jail. I wonder if the Drumpf maladministration somehow remodeled so Manafort could have more comfortable than normal/deserved digs. I’d prefer he have the version with concrete furniture and hadite block walls painted institutional pale green. Windows optional. Oh and 60 minutes everyday in a chain link cube yard with a basketball. No hoop, just a basketball.
1This is why I generally don’t get along with prosecutors. The blithe assumption that they should get to review a defense counsel laptop after they screamed bloody murder over Congressional oversight of their trial work product is hypocrisy of the highest order.
2@Lless
The simplest rule on electronics is that for contact visits within the picket walls they be verboten. If counsel even inadvertently takes such a device behind the picket wall, then it can never leave the facility.
3SLIME…really pardon the shouting. Entitled people aways think they are better and well entitled to special privileges. Glad he got caught, his lawyers should be facing some charges too.
4I’m thinking’ Mr. Manafort has been reading too much Uncle Remus while he’s in the pokey. Please, oh please, Mr. Judge — please don’t throw me in the VIP jail…BFH!
5easttxdem, was a time I thought the worst client for a defense attorney was an actually innocent client. Other than the fact that a plea bargain is inappropriate to their cases, innocent clients have principles that can be contrary to their own best interests in the judicial system such as it is. With time and hindsight, I see no reason to adjust my thinking regarding innocent clients.
Then come Donnie and Manafort, poster boys for privileged brat clients wrapped in entitlements. Meh. As Barbara Bush Sr. once said, ‘Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?’ So, I won’t waste my beautiful mind worrying about the likes of lawyers for Manafort and Donnie. Their attorneys need not worry about their clients possessing principles. However, the actions of their clients and consciousness of guilt should keep them up at night.
Instead, I’ll write a couple of more checks to support the ACLU and SPLC who continually rise to aid the defenseless and innocent.
6Since Paul Manafort is going to be transferred to the Alexandria, VA jail–the judge was not amused that he wanted out, then wanted to stay in the VIP suite down in the Northern Neck after the judge agreed to transfer him–he will now be quite close to his lawyers. Of course, his lawyers should be disbarred for that stupid stunt with the laptop, and ought to be fired immediately for their stupidity in talking about it in a monitored phone call, so Paul may need new lawyers.
7He had unlimited access to a phone!!!! He was in there for witness tampering. What is one way to continue that process?
8On the phone of course. At least the calls were monitored, but who is to say some didn’t slip through, just like the laptop?Virginia needs to rid itself of these VIP conditions and treat prisoners equally.
Y’all remember a kind of classic novel called the Red and the Black or the Scarlet and Black or some such thing? What I recall is that the “hero” is jailed at first in an apartment in the Bastille which rather blew my mind when I read it inasmuch as I cannot connect “apartment” with “Bastille”. He had everything and more to make him comfortable before his trial. And then the ball dropped, as they say. He was removed from “swank” to “stank” and then executed. I think Manafort read that book and he is now out of the “apartment” and into something he really, really hates and fears.
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