This short excerpt might indicate it began going poorly for the Mueller team within the first five minutes or so:
MR. DREEBEN: Yes, Your Honor.
THE COURT: All right. The indictment against Mr. Manafort was filed in February, but it actually was antedated by a filing in the District of Columbia. These allegations of bank fraud, of false income tax returns, of failure to register or report rather, failure to file reports of foreign bank accounts, and bank fraud, these go back to 2005, 2007,and so forth. Clearly, this investigation of Mr. Manafort's bank loans and so forth antedated the appointment of any special prosecutor and, therefore, must've been underway in the Department of Justice for some considerable period before the letter of appointment, which is dated the 17th of May in 2017. Am I correct?
MR. DREEBEN: That is correct, Your Honor.
THE COURT: All right. So when the special prosecutor was appointed -- and I have the letter of appointment in front of me -- what did they do? Turnover their file on their investigation of Mr. Manafort to you all?
MR. DREEBEN: Essentially, Your Honor, special counsel was appointed to conduct an investigation --
#6
THE COURT: "What we don't want in this
country is we don't want anyone with unfettered power.
We don't want federal judges with unfettered power. We
don't want elected officials with unfettered power. We
don't want anybody, including the president of the
United States, nobody to have unfettered power. So
it's unlikely you're going to persuade me that the
special prosecutor has unlimited powers to do anything
he or she wants."
This judge is interesting and refreshing; one who seems to care about the rule of law and is above politics.
#7
TW, "answer my question" is pretty mild stuff by federal court standards, although Dreeben arguably screwed up by not just giving the judge a straight answer to begin with. But as I see it from a thousand miles away:
1- The gummint's core problem here is that it's damned difficult to litigate if the success of your case depends on keeping a lot of documents secret. As the judge emphasized, the attorney made representations about the content of the Muelller-appointment letter. Those representations better be right. And as far as I know we haven't even started talking about Brady disclosures yet (the government's duty to disclose exculpatory evidence.).
2-The judge can end all this by uttering that magic phrase "Counsel for the prosecution, call your first witness." (Which I can tell you focuses a trial attorney's mind wonderfully.) The gummint's response would have to be "Well, the ding-dong's not firmly attached to the doo-dah so we need a continuance for a few years.") A dollar to a dime that no part of Mueller's project ever gets tried to a jury. But I suppose that's not the objective.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/07/2018 13:14 Comments ||
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#8
The Judge is also, unless I'm mistaken, the one from the Ted Stevens fiasco where he essentially through the damn court bench at the Prosecutors and DOJ employee's involved. I remember reading about a year ago he was appointed when a Mueller-linked judge "recused" himself from the Manafort case.
Or maybe that was Michael Flynn case? Either way, entertaining read of a Judge we need more of on the bench.
Posted by: Charles ||
05/07/2018 13:30 Comments ||
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#9
Reading the transcript reminded me of a Kingston Trio song: The Bad Man's Blunder Lyrics: (Well the judge was an old man) Too old.
(Ninety-three) Entirely too old.
I didn't like the way..the jury looked at me.
I think they were suspicious.
[Al Jazeera] Catalan politicians are attempting to put forward former regional President Carles Puigdemont as a candidate for the region's presidency, despite a European arrest warrant issued by Spain.
Puigdemont met with members of his Together For Catalonia, known by its Catalan acronym JxCat, in Berlin on Friday.
They proposed nominating Puigdemont, who could accept the presidential nomination from abroad thanks to a law recently passed in the regional Catalan parliament.
JxCat spokesperson Eduard Pujol said at a news conference on Friday that his party "wants to vote on the investiture" of Puigdemont, calling him "a legitimate president".
Catalonia held snap polls in December, called by the Spanish government, to form a new parliament after separatists led by Puigdemont tried to secede the region from Spain.
Secessionist parties maintained their majority, continuing the struggle between the national and regional governments.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/07/2018 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] The government-run Violence against Women Centre (VAWC) Multan Home of the Multan Sultans... has recorded 1,545 cases of violence against women (VAW) from March 2017 to April 2018.
According to the data provided by the Social Welfare Department, the highest number of registered cases is of domestic abuse (918 cases), followed by 165 family cases, 99 harassment cases and 89 property disputes.
Salman Sufi, heading the CM’s Strategic Reforms Unit (SRU) ‐ the authority in charge of the project ‐ says the centre has started functioning completely and that the locals have now begun taking it seriously.
The VAWC was set up following the Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... Protection of Women against Violence Act 2016, the law that was heavily countered by hard liners. The figures point out that the pandemic of gender-based violence is highest in Punjab with most reported cases.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/07/2018 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] Two tribal elders were killed and two women injured when faceless myrmidons opened fire on them in Mola area of Khuzdar district on Saturday night.
Levies officials said that the gunnies barged into the house of Muhammad Akbar Jamalzai and opened fire. As a result of the firing, Akbar Jamalzai went titzup while three others, including two women, sustained injuries.
Naib tehsildar Hafiz Muhammad Ashraf said that Levies personnel rushed to the site and shifted the injured to the district hospital where one of them departed this vale of tears. He was identified as Saddat, son of Jamalzai.
According to Levies officials, Jamalzai had killed three persons ‐ his brother, nephew and another close relative ‐ on April 6. "The motive behind the murder was an enmity between the families," they added.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/07/2018 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] Indian police on said Sunday they have tossed in the clink Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! the main suspect in the gang rape and gruesome murder of a teenage girl, in the latest of several high-profile sexual assault cases in the country.
The local village chief has also been detained while the 16-year-old victim's family have been given special police protection.
Dhanu Bhuiyan was found at a relative's house where he was hiding after he and accomplices allegedly burned the girl alive Friday in a remote district of the eastern state of Jharkhand.
Police said Bhuiyan became enraged after the local village council ordered him to do 100 sit-ups and pay a Rs50,000 fine for the victim's gang rape. Bhuiyan and his accomplices allegedly attacked the girl's parents before setting their house on fire with the girl inside.
"The main suspect has been arrested from a relative's place where he was hiding. We have also set up a medical board which will conduct the (victim's) post-mortem [examination]," police Inspector General Shambhu Thakur told AFP.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/07/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
I get the feeling the justice system doesn't really get it yet.
#2
Gorb: Justice System? What Justice System? The location was a remote village close to the Bangladesh border. I can assure you that most of the people including the village elders are backwards and mostly illiterate. The only authority in these villages are the elders. Sure, there's a traveling constable that comes through every few weeks. Big deal.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[DAWN] Two tribal elders were killed and two women injured when 
