2/ According to Stone, Manafort is still "entirely loyal" to the President and Stone does not believe that Manafort will flip on anyone.
Replying to @renato_mariotti @YahooNews @Isikoff
3/ Stone said that Manafort confirmed that he was told he would be indicted. He said that Manafort was in an "amazingly good mood" and was
..................
In my experience, most targets of a white collar investigation plan to fight and overestimate their chance of
7/ success against the government. Their lawyers often point out avenues where the government can be challenged, and the client often comes
8/ to have an inflated view of their potential success either because that's what he/she wants to hear or because the lawyers don't bluntly
9/ explain the downsides and/or the low probability of success. When I prosecuted white collar cases, I often dealt with highly aggressive
10/ defense strategies that sought to demonize the prosecution, so Manafort's claims of legal violations by Mueller's team doesn't surprise
11/ me at all. So does this mean that Manafort won't flip, as Stone suggests? Not necessarily. In my experience, targets like Manafort don't
12/ begin to consider flipping until the potential of a prison sentence seems very likely. That is often after indictment, when the defense
13/ receives all of the government's evidence and the defendant has an opportunity to make (and lose) motions to dismiss the indictment.
14/ The one wild card in Manafort's case is whether he believes he'll receive a pardon. If I represented Manafort, I would consider whether
15/ the charged crime is something I believed the President would be willing to issue a pardon for. Recently we saw the President's lawyer
16/ distance him from Manafort after emails were revealed where Manafort offered special access to a Russian billionaire. If that ultimately
17/ resulted in a charge, and Manafort's team felt a conviction was likely, they might think a pardon was less likely. In any event, the
18/ point I made above--that flipping (or pleading guilty) only comes when the defendant feels he is likely to go to prison--can help you
19/ understand why Mueller hasn't charged Manafort yet. Typically federal prosecutors in a complex white collar case wait until the end of
20/ an investigation to seek an indictment. That means that the prosecutor will have the strongest charges with the most evidence.
21/ Because it can be hard to convince rich white collar defendants to flip (or even to plead guilty), the prosecutor wants as much evidence
22/ as possible. The prosecutor also wants to put all of the charges in the indictment instead of putting himself/herself on a "clock" by
23/ charging a single crime and starting a court case while the prosecutor continues investigating other crimes. So we can expect Mueller
24/ to continue to gather evidence on Manafort until the investigation is complete. One last point on Manafort--Stone questions why the FBI
25/ would photograph Manafort's suits. I don't know why, but possibilities that come to mind would be to show evidence of his wealth or to
6/ confirm an identification of Manafort during surveillance. As for Stone himself, during the interview he was asked about his
27/ knowledge of Julian Assange's acquisition of stolen emails, which he did not directly answer. I personally asked Stone why he thought it
28/ was a good idea to communicate with Guccifer 2.0 when we were on the same radio show and he also evaded my question. My free advice to
29/ Stone is that he has potential liability and should avoid further interviews until Mueller's investigation is complete. /end |
