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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Full transcript of Judge Ellis' 4 May, 48 page beatdown of the Mueller team |
| 2018-05-07 |
| 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 -- THE COURT: I'm sorry. Answer my question. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #11 The document is worth reading in full. I didn't expect to do that, but it is a very good read. |
| Posted by: Whiskey Mike 2018-05-07 16:44 |
| #10 Thank you for bring the expert’s expertise to bear on the situation, Matt. Rantburg U rocks! :-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2018-05-07 15:04 |
| #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. |
| Posted by: magpie 2018-05-07 14:28 |
| #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 2018-05-07 13:30 |
| #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 2018-05-07 13:14 |
| #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. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2018-05-07 12:00 |
| #5 Very interesting read. I'm not able to read long documents anymore but that grabbed my attention. |
| Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 2018-05-07 11:12 |
| #4 In other words he's perfect for the Obama Inquisition... |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2018-05-07 10:04 |
| #3 Meuller has a history of going off the investigative path and bullying people to get what he wants with non-related charges. Which is why the deep state appointed him. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2018-05-07 09:33 |
| #2 Frank Drebin: "Don't call me Shirley..." |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2018-05-07 08:56 |
| #1 Ouch. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2018-05-07 08:37 |