According to Aruna Viswanatha at the WSJ, Paul Manafort really was indeed trying to work a deal with Robert Mueller for the federal trial that starts next month, but apparently he overplayed his hand and he ended up losing it all.
Paul Manafort’s defense team held talks with prosecutors to resolve a second set of charges against the former Trump campaign chairman before he was convicted last week, but they didn’t reach a deal, and the two sides are now moving closer to a second trial next month, according to people familiar with the matter.
The plea discussions occurred as a Virginia jury was spending four days deliberating tax and bank fraud charges against Mr. Manafort, the people said. That jury convicted him on eight counts and deadlocked on 10 others. Prosecutors accused Mr. Manafort of avoiding taxes on more than $16 million he earned in the early 2010s through political consulting work in Ukraine.
The plea talks on the second set of charges stalled over issues raised by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, one of the people said. It isn’t clear what those issues were, and the proposed terms of the plea deal couldn’t immediately be determined.
Representatives for Messrs. Manafort and Mueller declined to comment.
The talks were aimed at forestalling a second, related trial for Mr. Manafort, which is scheduled to begin on Sept. 17 in Washington.
Manafort apparently thought he was going to skate on the charges earlier this month and shopped a deal to Mueller, but as we now know, Manafort was convicted on 8 charges and was one holdout juror away from being convicted on all 18.
Marcy Wheeler tries to figure out what the hell Manafort was thinking from the get-go by betting everything on the Virginia trial and it wasn't a totally awful plan considering, but the chances of it working were low at best.
Still, getting one trial in EDVA almost worked, with a holdout juror that hung the jury on 10 of 18 charges (though that won’t have that big an effect on sentencing) and lots of good press stemming from Ellis beating up the prosecution, both during Manafort’s challenge to Mueller’s authority and during the trial in general.
Add in the fact that Manafort (again, with his seemingly endless supply of funds to pay defense attorneys) got two bites at key challenges to Mueller’s case in chief — his authority generally, and the search of Manafort’s condo for things including evidence about the June 9 meeting — and the dual trial strategy probably wasn’t a total flop (unless, of course, it means Manafort is running out of money). Along the way, he also got full discovery on what Rick Gates has provided Mueller, presumably including the real goods Gates gave Mueller on the conspiracy with Russia.
But Manafort’s still facing another trial in a less friendly venue before a no-nonsense judge, a trial he seems to have done nothing to prepare for. (WSJ reports the two sides did consider a plea on the DC charges while waiting for the EDVA verdict, to no avail.) And all of Rudy’s squealing about how indictments or even further investigation during the campaign season might be a distraction, Manafort’s trial (one that’s sexier than the EDVA one) will remain a constant focus in the last six weeks before the election.
To be fair, it’s hard to measure how Manafort’s strategy is playing, as it’s not clear what — besides a full pardon — his goals are. Plus, he’s got a shitty hand, no matter how you look at it (except for the seemingly endless supply of defense fund dollars).
But Manafort’s bid for a second trial seems like an even worse strategic decision than Michael Cohen’s bid for a Special Master (which I now admit at least gave Trump and his company an opportunity to undercut any Cohen bid for a plea deal) not least because he’ll be a felon in his DC trial which will in turn make sentencing worse if he is found guilty there.
At least the defense bar is making money.
Maybe Manafort is trying to lose so spectacularly that Trump will have no choice but to pardon him. Manafort, now a convicted felon, with a federal trial starting six weeks before the election, is going to be a nightmare for the GOP, one bad enough that Trump may go rogue as Vanity Fair's Gabe Sherman suggests and pardon him.
We'll see. Here’s what I do know: Manafort shopped a deal and Trump has been openly floating the idea of pardoning him. Maybe Mueller already knows whatever Manafort knows about Trump, but whatever it is, Donald Trump is terrified of it becoming public in Manafort’s trial next month. There’s no other explanation for trying to pardon Manafort at this point.
Look for how Trump reacts to the news that Manafort was trying to cut a deal. If Trump still hints at a pardon, then Manafort is sitting on a keg of TNT at a nitroglycerin factory. If this causes Trump to turn on him like he did to Cohen however, all bets are off.
The only person who knows for sure is Mueller, and he’s not going to say a word.
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