DOJ attorneys joined the Manafort case this afternoon. WTF!?

[triron]

Link to tweet

[RockRaven]

1. I think it just means the case is moving from Office of Special Council to the US Attorney for DC

More of Mueller passing off the handling of cases to regular DOJ units, because even after sentencing the DOJ needs to have attorneys assigned to the case to deal with appeals and such.

It *could* be sketchy, but on the surface it seems benign.

[blm]

2. A William Barr run DoJ is never benign when Republican corruption is being

investigated and exposed.

[triron]

3. I'm not reading it that way at all. Maybe I'm confused but doesn't this mean DOJ attorneys

are working for Manafort? But now I understand what you are saying as well.

[RockRaven]

4. I believe it means some DOJ attorneys are adding their names to the prosecution's side

of Manafort's cases. Federal employees are generally not allowed to work for other parties, especially ones with business which interfaces with the department/agency they work for. An active DOJ prosecutor could not work as a defense attorney in a federal prosecution. I know Barr and Trump are corrupt mofos, but the headlines would make this transgression explicit if it was what you are interpreting it as.

The question of corruption etc is whether OSC handing off Manafort's case to regular DOJ is a sign that the prosecutors won't hold strong on appeals and such because of Barr and Trump, I think. And it certainly is possible, but the handoff is not *inherently* a sign of corruption. Mueller handed off Cohen to SDNY after all, but very few pointed to that as a sign that the fix was in...