Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (1031970)	9/25/2017 8:19:50 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1579109

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