Politics Manafort goes on trial tomorrow

Discussion in 'Blazers OT Forum' started by Lanny, Jul 30, 2018.

  1. yankeesince59

    yankeesince59 "Oh Captain, my Captain".

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    ...thanx CC. I've been on the S2 Yanx board since the ESPN board shut down 5 years ago where I was a poster for about 13 years. The S2 Yanx board is nice but we don't have nearly as much traffic as this board does, especially about OT content. I just 2 weeks or so I've read a ton of posts on a lot of topics and have already developed some opinions on a few posters here...also, this board IMO is VERY well moderated, which is also important.
    ...I may come off as a jackass from time to time but it's really not intentional...it's just that I love to argue, because for me, it's a great way to learn.

    ...needless to say, like most posters, I'm quite opinionated...I'm usually right, occasionally wrong.......but never in doubt. :lol:


    ...thanx again.....59.
     
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  2. yankeesince59

    yankeesince59 "Oh Captain, my Captain".

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    It's been awhile, but I think he used to post on the Yanx board occasionally.
     
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  3. Lanny

    Lanny Original Season Ticket Holder "Mr. Big Shot"

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    Yeah, but his posts are so obnoxious. Who gets a kick out of making obnoxious posts? I guess such harmless people exist but this is the first one I've encountered. Thank God it's a rare occurrence.
     
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  4. SlyPokerDog

    SlyPokerDog Woof! Staff Member Administrator

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    Me.

    I just made one about Trump being a Russian asset.
     
  5. Lanny

    Lanny Original Season Ticket Holder "Mr. Big Shot"

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    The post wasn't obnoxious, the story was.
     
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  6. MARIS61

    MARIS61 Real American

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    My original post is 100% accurate, and you're simply avoiding facts.

    You are correct in that you're wasting your time.
     
  7. MARIS61

    MARIS61 Real American

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    Proof you know nothing about the trial.

    So far, unless there's some shocker revelation Monday, the defense may not even need to present any rebuttal witnesses.

    No evidence has been submitted that points to any crimes other than by Gates and the other witnesses given total immunity by Mueller. Now it has come out Gates also committed fraud against the RNC to cover his embezzling from Manafort. He's looking at a huge civil suit that Mueller can't save him from.
     
  8. MARIS61

    MARIS61 Real American

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    Simply a legal necessity given the ballistic extremes in abusing the legal system that the victim-generation resorts to when told the simple truth.

    You can be absolutely certain that MARIS61 stands behind every post he/she makes. :cheers:
     
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  9. MARIS61

    MARIS61 Real American

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    So? The witness will not be believed, with good reason.

    That is all I said.

    The bottom line so far is that Mueller has not presented a single witness that he didn't threaten, coerce, or pay large sums of money to in order to gain the testimony he wants.

    No unbiased juror could vote for anything but acquittal under such obvious abuse of the Justice system.
     
  10. MARIS61

    MARIS61 Real American

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    Wait...people actually buy cats? :rofl:
     
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  11. MARIS61

    MARIS61 Real American

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    Never.
     
  12. MARIS61

    MARIS61 Real American

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    riverman said:

    yeah...strange form of amusement to insult my wife as a first generation American who according to him is the problem with America....

    Never happened.
     
  13. SlyPokerDog

    SlyPokerDog Woof! Staff Member Administrator

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    Saying a fiction message character stands behind every post he/she makes doesn't mean much except that this fictional message board character is apparently a hermaphrodite.
     
  14. SlyPokerDog

    SlyPokerDog Woof! Staff Member Administrator

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    You did, just like you've insulted my family.
     
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  15. MARIS61

    MARIS61 Real American

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    Manafort trial is complicated but Americans need to know this
    [​IMG]
    By Hans A. von Spakovsky | Fox News

    Judge delays start of Day 9 of Paul Manafort trial
    Prosecutors had been expected to rest their case before the delay; reaction from James Trusty, former Department of Justice prosecutor.

    The first two weeks of the trial of former Donald Trump presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort on 18 counts of tax evasion and bank fraud charges have failed to implicate Trump or his campaign in any alleged criminal conduct.

    Prosecutors working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller – who is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election – are expected to call their final witness Monday at Manafort’s trial in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. If convicted on all counts, Manafort could face a maximum sentence of 305 years in prison.

    So far we’ve learned that the prosecution’s star witness, former Manafort employee Rick Gates, is a liar, a serial adulterer and a thief who embezzled funds from Manafort.

    And we’ve learned that Manafort is alleged to have evaded paying taxes on income that he and Gates earned through secret offshore bank accounts, shell companies and fraudulent bank loans.

    But when it comes to the mandate given to Mueller on May 17, 2017, we’ve learned absolutely nothing. Mueller was charged with investigating “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.”

    But neither Gates nor any other witness at the Manafort trial has testified about the Russian election interference or any alleged collusion between the Trump campaign – or Trump himself – with the Russians.

    Manafort was with the Trump presidential campaign for just under five months. That’s a tiny sliver of the long career of the 68-year-old.

    All of the testimony at the Manafort trial has addressed events that occurred long before Manafort went to work for 2016 Trump campaign. The testimony has focused on Manafort’s and Gates’s activities as alleged “unregistered agents” representing the Ukrainian government starting in 2006.

    It would be absurd to argue that Manafort’s other clients in the 12 years since then are somehow to blame for any criminal activity he may have engaged in – and prosecutors aren’t even trying to point the finger at President Trump for these activities.

    Manafort’s lawyers claim that Gates was the actual wrongdoer, and they subjected him to a punishing cross-examination.

    Under questioning, Gates was forced to admit that he lied to the investigators from the special counsel’s office; embezzled huge amounts of money from Manafort and prior employers; and used the stolen funds in part to pay for extramarital affairs and a “secret life” that included an apartment and a girlfriend in London.

    Through their cross-examination, Manafort’s lawyers pushed the idea to the jury that Gates got accountants to falsify Manafort’s tax returns in order to cover up the embezzling. Gates’ fraud apparently included submitting fraudulent personal expenses to the Trump inauguration committee.

    Prosecutors tried to counter this with testimony by an FBI forensic accountant, an Internal Revenue Service agent, and Manafort’s own accountant. The accountant testified under a grant of immunity that although she worked with Gates a lot, she "believed " Manafort “knew what was going on.”

    At a prior hearing in this case, the presiding federal judge – the very colorful T.S. Ellis III – said that Mueller is prosecuting Manafort in part because he wants Manafort to “sing” – in other words, testify against President Trump on other unrelated matters.

    Ellis said at the earlier hearing that Mueller set out to “turn the screws and get the information you really want” from Manafort. And that information, according to the judge, is what “Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump and lead to his prosecution or impeachment.”

    It is certainly possible that Gates has some kind of evidence relevant to the Russian collusion allegation that Mueller has not yet made public. And perhaps Manafort also has similar evidence.

    But so far at least, Manafort has chosen not to cooperate with Mueller. There was a hint of this in the trial with regard to Gates after the judge issued an order on Thursday at the request of the government. The order sealed portions of a “sidebar” conference the lawyers had with the judge to avoid “revealing substantive evidence pertaining to an ongoing government investigation.”

    If Gates is the one with this “secret” evidence against the Trump campaign, the government will face a severe witness-credibility problem, given his embarrassing admissions on the stand in the Manafort trial.

    Moreover, Gates admitted that he was threatened with 290 years in prison by Mueller’s team –but was promised he could get off with just probation if he agreed to testify against Manafort. That certainly gives Gates an enormous incentive to allege criminal conduct by Manafort. It’s hard to believe that prosecutors would offer Gates a “get out of jail free card” if he testified that Manafort did nothing wrong.

    If Manafort is found guilty of tax evasion and bank fraud, some will try to use his very brief association with the Trump campaign to tar the president. But such criticism would ignore two crucial facts.

    First, presidential campaigns are not law enforcement agencies. They have neither the capacity nor the resources to do detailed background investigations on the thousands of individuals who volunteer to work with a campaign.

    Second, Manafort appeared to be a successful, ethical businessman. Even the government – including the IRS, the FBI and our intelligence agencies – had no idea that he was allegedly engaging in any wrongdoing for a foreign government through an elaborate scheme of offshore bank accounts and shell companies, until Mueller’s office started investigating him.

    In an odd point in the trial, Gates testified that he and Manafort actually told the FBI about their offshore bank accounts in Cypress back in 2014. At the time, the FBI was investigating the former Ukrainian president. Gates and Manafort disclosed the accounts to the agent, because that is how the Ukrainian government paid them.


    Yet the FBI apparently did nothing about this and did not notify the IRS. There has been no explanation from the government as to why it took no action at that time.


    And surely the Trump campaign cannot be legitimately criticized for not knowing, as the federal government did not know, what Manafort and Gates were supposedly doing vis a vis their personal finances and income tax liability.

    The bottom line is this: The Manafort trial is about alleged criminal activity by Manafort and Gates. If Manafort had not spent less than five months working as a volunteer on the Trump presidential campaign he might never have even been charged with a crime.

    However, Manafort’s short time in a high-visibility role with the campaign placed all his past activities – having nothing to do with Donald Trump – under the microscope.

    In the unlikely event Manafort had been charged with the same crimes but had never joined the Trump campaign his trial would no doubt have attracted only a small amount of media attention. Only his association with Trump has turned his trial into a major news story.

    The Manafort trial is complicated. It is receiving enormous news coverage. Most Americans don’t have the time or interest to follow every detail on a daily basis. So it’s understandable that many people assume the trial has something or other to do with President Trump and his campaign.

    But that assumption is a mistake. Whether you support President Trump or oppose him, the simple and indisputable fact is that nothing in the Manafort trial so far has revealed any evidence of collusion with Russia or any other misconduct by President Trump or his campaign.


    This trial is about Paul Manafort and Rick Gates – not Donald Trump.

    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018...plicated-but-americans-need-to-know-this.html
     
  16. riverman

    riverman Writing Team

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    You sure did....you are not truthful enough to own it....it's when I put you on ignore and kept you there...and why....you said immigrants come to this country and sponge off welfare....etc...drain your tax dollars....plus a bunch of anti immigrant ranting and sensationalized horseshit....crime, ...etc...when I answered you that my wife was a great first generation American you answered...then you are part of the problem....yeah...play your little fake American games buddy...you don't fool me for a minute...you've insulted me an my wife and now you can just live with your own jaded sense of false nationalism.....you throw it out there...own it and understand....you've lost all respect from my camp...respect is earned...you've shown me very little hence....I mute your babble. I skim your posts if I forget to log on so I noticed this one....my family is an asset to this country....unlike you, I won't judge yours but I also won't stand for your judgements against mine. I have honest convictions. You have Fox news feeds and deep state paranoia ...learn common decency and respect...my wife read that post and was insulted by it
     
    Last edited: Aug 11, 2018
  17. MARIS61

    MARIS61 Real American

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    Bigot.

    We are in the age of gender-deniability, and you are casting aspersions on victims of birth defects? :dunno:
     
  18. MARIS61

    MARIS61 Real American

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    I don't post about immigrants, except in a positive light. Immigrants created every single current country on Earth, so they are us and we are them.

    I have posted often about criminals, including illegal aliens, pointing out their flawed character and their selfish desertion of their homelands.

    I was not aware your wife is an illegal alien, but I am still waiting for you to produce this non-existent post you rant about every time you are losing a debate.

    Put up or shut up.
     
  19. SlyPokerDog

    SlyPokerDog Woof! Staff Member Administrator

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    [​IMG]
     
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  20. riverman

    riverman Writing Team

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    own your own babble....debate that with the voices in your head
     
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