The extraordinary bias of the judge in the Manafort trial
The extraordinary bias of the judge in the Manafort trial
By Nancy Gertner
August 16 at 3:13 PM
Nancy Gertner, a retired U.S. District Court judge in Massachusetts, is a lecturer at Harvard Law School.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-extraordinary-bias-of-the-judge-in-the-manafort-trial/2018/08/16/aca48040-a16c-11e8-83d2-70203b8d7b44_story.html?utm_term=.3be2f6e0b901
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During the trial, Ellis intervened regularly, and mainly against one side: the prosecution. The judge's interruptions occurred in the presence of the jury and on matters of substance, not courtroom conduct. He disparaged the prosecution's evidence, misstated its legal theories, even implied that prosecutors had disobeyed his orders when they had not.
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But there will be no appeal available to address Ellis's anti-prosecution bias if Manafort is acquitted by the jurors, who began deliberating on Thursday. The prohibition against double jeopardy precludes it. And if President Trump's former campaign chairman is convicted despite Ellis's interventions, the judge's hostility toward the prosecution will have been irrelevant.
For now, we have only the extraordinary evidence of Ellis's conduct during the 12-day trial. The judge continually interrupted the prosecution's questioning of witnesses, prompting lead prosecutor Greg Andres to pointedly note: "Your honor stops us and asks us to move on." Ellis pressed the prosecution to rush through testimony about important financial documents. He made critical comments about prosecution evidence and strategy — all in front of the jury.
Ellis also questioned the relevance of Manafort's work as a political consultant for Russian-backed politicians in Ukraine, for which he was paid tens of millions of dollars from 2010 to 2014. But if Manafort didn't disclose some payments because he was not registered in the United States as a foreign agent, it would provide a motive to hide the amounts from the U.S. government — just what the trial was about. Ellis chided prosecutors for eliciting testimony about Manafort's lavish lifestyle, but that kind of testimony is also a classic element in a tax-evasion case. That your cars, boats, condos and clothing suggest you made much more income than you reported would surely be relevant.
After prosecutor Uzo Asonye questioned a bank employee about Manafort's failed attempt to obtain a $5.5 million construction loan on a Brooklyn brownstone, the judge — unprompted by a defense objection — declared: "You might want to spend time on a loan that was granted." The comment strongly implied to jurors that the prosecution was wasting their time. But an attempt to defraud was part of the conspiracy count in the indictment; false representation to secure a loan, successful or not, is itself a crime.
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