One thing is certainly clear. We are a Land of Laws. Specifically, most Americans believe “laws should be applied equally to all people.” And that the punishment should equal the crime.
Furthermore, when Paul Manafort was indicted for alleged money laundering and fraud by Robert Mueller, tossing the 68-year-old Manafort in solitary confinement certainly does not fit the alleged crime.
In America, you are INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY.
In a stunning defense, the Manafort team reveals the FBI met with four reporters. And LEAKED DETAILS OF THE MANAFORT CASE to start the special counsel.
Furthermore, Andrew Weismann of the Mueller team set the meeting up a month before Mueller was selected.
Turn back the clock to April 11, 2017. The FBI meets with four reporters that Weismann set up. Fast forward to today.
It is revealed the Manafort team secures the FBI memos from the meeting. And the “two memos written by FBI agents who attended the meeting and documented their version of what transpired,” reports Politico.
What is so wrong with the FBI meeting with the media to expose Manafort?
The obvious answer is that the FBI was using Manafort as a spring board to start the special counsel.
The optics appear to be the FBI’s goal was to involve the media and de-legitmize the Trump administration. Specifically, a way to continue the ‘Russia Russia Russia’ narrative. And also, to start the Mueller probe.
Manafort’s team is fighting back. Politico reports there is “confirmation that journalists were given inside information about the investigation in violation of Justice Department policies. And, perhaps, legal prohibitions on disclosure of grand jury secrets.”
Moreover, Manafort’s “lawyers demand hearing on the Justice Department’s off-the-record meeting with four reporters, claiming it prompted ‘improper leaks’ to the press and led to the criminal charges against him,” as per the Daily Mail’s headline.
Politico reports:
“The meeting raises serious concerns about whether a violation of grand jury secrecy occurred,” Manafort’s lawyers wrote in a filing Friday. With U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis, who’s set to oversee an upcoming trial of Manafort on bank and tax fraud charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. “Now, based on the FBI’s own notes of the meeting, it is beyond question that a hearing is warranted.”
One of the FBI memos indicates that the AP did get some information at the meeting. At the conclusion of the session, reporters got a vague assurance that they “appeared to have a good understanding of Manafort’s business dealings,” one memo says. The same memo says the meeting was “arranged” by Andrew Weissmann. Then the chief of the fraud section of Justice’s Criminal Division and now the top prosecutor on the Manafort case.
The meeting took place a day before the AP published a story saying that Manafort received at least some payments ascribed to him or his companies in a so-called black ledger of off-the-books spending by former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.”
