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“Through roughly 14 hours of deliberation, they’ve been unable to do that.”

“But that’s not unusual.”

“No as this is a very complicated case with 18 charges.”

“Not only are prosecutors trying Manafort for 18 counts — an unusually high total — but their case involves complex tax and bank loan laws.”

“Moreover, the jury was selected from a pool of Manafort’s peers in Eastern Virginia, not a group of accountants and bankers who would be expected to have more familiarity with the laws prosecutors have alleged he broke.”

No one should have harbored illusions about a quick turnaround from the jury.

“Because this is a ‘paper case’ with a number of charges, complicated financial records, and a lay jury not selected for its understanding of international financial transactions, we would expect a medium-length to long deliberation process — at least a couple days — simply for the jurors to work through all the evidence and discuss each charge separately,” lawyer and professor Seth Abramson said in an email Friday.

“Quick verdicts are not generally associated with lengthy, document-heavy white-collar prosecutions,” he said.

“One former Justice Department prosecutor who has tried similar cases told Roll Call the general rule of thumb for a favorable timeline for jury deliberation is one day per week of trial proceedings.”

“Prosecutors rested their case after two weeks of evidence and witness testimony.”

“But the high number of charges and the Eastern Virginia District court’s notoriously quick pace of proceedings — it’s called the “rocket docket” for a reason, and the statue adorning the courthouse’s front facade bears the legend, “Justice delayed is justice denied” — could jettison that rule of thumb.”

“You have to come to a conclusion on all 18,” the former prosecutor said.

“Even if the jury has reached a decision on 17 of the counts, they could be stuck for hours or even days on the final one.”

“In some cases, juries reach quick decisions on nearly all the charges but take a long time to decide what to do with a final charge or two that they think may not have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” Abramson said.

Yes and this is an important point. As Bill Palmer points out it’s very unlikely that Manafort won’t be convicted. He points out that in discussing what happens if Manafort is not convicted we need to unpack what that really means.

“First we have to make sure we’re asking the right question. Paul Manafort is currently on trial for eighteen different felony charges. For him to be acquitted, all twelve jurors would need to find him “not guilty” on all eighteen charges. Simply put, that’s not going to happen. The relevant question here is what happens if one or more jurors ends up being uncomfortable voting “guilty” on one or more charges. The evidence against Manafort is a slam dunk on every count. However, some of the charges are more complicated and difficult to understand than others, so it’s possible that not every juror will get there on every charge.”

Exactly. This is why the MSM coverage that suggests it’s wide open as to wether he’s convicted or not are making you worry unnecessarily.

There are 18 charges-the only way Manafort actually walks is if all 12 jurors find him not guilty for all 18 charges.

“Just to pick a hypothetical, let’s say that eleven jurors want to convict Manafort on all eighteen charges, and one juror is only willing to convict him on fourteen of the charges. Various legal experts have stated that in such a case, the jury would end up agreeing to convict on the fourteen charges, while tossing out the other four. This would be considered a thorough victory for Robert Mueller, who really only needs Manafort to be convicted on any one charge in order to establish the precedent that his Trump-Russia investigation is legally valid. But there is another scenario.”

So the true worst case scenario is that there is a juror who refuses to charge him on any of 18 charges. This is highly unlikely, Indeed, the virtue of having so many complex charges is it’s very unlikely anyone is going to acquit him on all 18-will any juror really think Manafort is totally innocent? But as Palmer argues, in that case Manafort still doesn’t walk.

“Let’s say there’s one juror who ultimately refuses to convict Manafort on any charges. To be as clear as possible, we’ve seen absolutely no signs that this is the case. But if it did happen, the result would be a hung jury and a mistrial. Mueller would then need to decide whether to prioritize retrying Manafort on these charges in front of a new jury, or focus on Manafort’s second trial on a different batch of charges, which is set to begin next month.”

“Again, I can’t stress enough that there is absolutely no reason to believe that the jury will fail to convict Paul Manafort. I know cable news has done a fair amount of scaremongering over this, but keep in mind that the legal experts on television are playing for the cameras, which requires creating suspense – even when there is none. If you read the opinions of various legal experts who aren’t in front of a camera, it’s difficult to find anyone who thinks there’s any realistic chance Manafort won’t be convicted.”

That’s the thing to remember-there’s no way Manafort walks. At best he’d get a hung jury. But even one juror finding him not guilty on all 18 counts is highly unlikely.

Nope-Trump’s campaign manager is about to be convicted for bank fraud and tax evasion. And the more interesting trail starts next month in Washington DC. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg on Manafort.

We haven’t even gotten into his willingness to use his role as campaign manager to ‘get whole’ with the sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska or his offering him a private briefing for the campaign in early July. We haven’t discussed his conversations with Konstantin Kilimnik-his man in Kiev in NY in early August 2016 that Manafort claims was just a ‘light discussion’ about, you know, the Russian hacks of the DNC. A conversation between the Trump campaign manager and a ‘former’ agent of the KGB about the Russian hacks of the DNC-what could be more innocent than that?

UPDATE: We later learned that he gave Kilimnik 75 pages of detailed campaign data at this allegedly informal dinner with a Russian intelligence operative.

Then there’s Manafort’s attendance as Trump’s campaign manager at the Trump Tower Russia meeting with Donald Jr and Jared Kushner in June, 2016 where in an email, Rob Goldstone promised  promised Russian dirt on Clinton ‘as part of the Russian government’s support for your father’s campaign.’

And there’s Manafort’s receiving an email from campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos right after he’d been told about the incriminating emails on Clinton the Russians had.

“Papadopolous sent the first email to seven campaign advisers in March 2016 with the subject line “Meeting with Russian Leadership – Including Putin.” His requests were reportedly met with hesitancy from multiple campaign officials, including retired Navy Rear Adm. Charles Kubic, who voiced concerns about violating both US sanctions on Russia and the Logan Act, a law forbidding US citizens from negotiating with foreign governments without authorization.”

“Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman and a current subject in the Russia investigation, also expressed concerns about the proposal and rejected Papadopoulos’ request for a meeting between Trump and Russian officials in May 2016, according to The Post.”

“Manafort’s rejection stands in contrast to his willingness to accept a meeting with a Russian lawyer weeks later in June, a point that Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, raised after the story broke.”

Note that ‘rejection’ is a little strong. Was it a rejection of meeting with the Russians or just that Trump himself shouldn’t go? There’s reason to believe that these emails by Papadopoulos were the driver behind Carter Page’s Moscow trip in early July.

Indeed, there’s the question of wether Manafort approved Page’s trip. 

“Manafort, of course, lays all the blame on his predecessor-Corey Lewandowski. Manfaort and Lewandowski share great mutual opprobrium. And it seems likely that Lewandowski did approve the trip.”

“Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski approved foreign policy adviser Carter Page’s now-infamous trip to Moscow last summer on the condition that he would not be an official representative of the campaign, according to a former campaign adviser.”

“A few weeks before he traveled to Moscow to give a July 7 speech, Page asked J.D. Gordon, his supervisor on the campaign’s National Security Advisory Committee, for permission to make the trip, and Gordon strongly advised against it, Gordon, a retired naval officer, told POLITICO.”

“Page then emailed Lewandowski and spokeswoman Hope Hicks asking for formal approval, and was told by Lewandowski that he could make the trip, but not as an official representative of the campaign, the former campaign adviser said. The adviser spoke on the condition of anonymity because he has not been authorized to discuss internal campaign matters.”

“Lewandowski told POLITICO he did not recall the email exchange with Page, but he did not deny that it occurred.”

Of course, why would Page need permission for a private trip? And what did he plan to do on this private trip?

Still it’s not all that plausible that Manafort didn’t know/approve-more likely his pushback only amounted to saying send a cutout.

“The campaign fired Lewandowski on June 20, before Page took the trip. Paul Manafort, who replaced Lewandowski as manager and later became chairman, said he had no knowledge of any aspect of Page’s trip, including whether Lewandowski or anyone else approved it.”

But as noted, he became campaign manager before Page took the trip. And while he wasn’t formally made campaign manager until June 20, he’d been de facto at least the co campaign manager since he joined in March. In addition as we saw above he received Papadopoulos’ email.

In any case, don’t let the MSM’s desire to introduce uncertainty and excitement get to you. Trump’s campaign manager is not going to be acquitted of the current charges and is very likely to be convicted on a number if not all 18 counts. And despite all the talk about how this case has nothing to do with Trump or Russia collusion, Manafort’s all the way up to his neck on collusion and the Trump campaign.

UPDATE: . As it turned out Manafort was found guilty on 10 of 19 counts-it turned out just one holdout juror prevented his being found guilty on all 18. Those 8 counts could have given him up to 24 years in prison though T. S. Ellis turned out to be quite a Trump partisan and only allowed a 47 month sentence.

At the time of the Virginia trial the Trump GOP co-conspirator talking point was that these were crimes that had nothing to do with Russian collusion so it was somehow unfair to prosecute for them and they certainly had no relevance to the fake ‘President’ but what has merged since is the extent to which Manafort was involved in Russian collusion itself has since emerged-Chapter A for much more.

Manafort then got 28 more months in Amy Berman Jackson’s court-she was also quite charitable to him as she has been to his buddy Roger Stone-even after Stone’s threats against her; far from any Deep State Conspiracy the institutionalist types have all bent over backwards to assure Trump and his co-conspirators they aren’t being treated unfairly-without all the squaking the sentences would probably be less lenient-just like Pelosi admits the reason she’s so nervous about impeaching Trump is that McConnell will acquit him-thereby greatly rewarding the GOP’s hyper partisanship

UPDATE 2.0: While Carter Page wasn’t indicted EmptyWheel argues that it may be the Steele Dossier that saved Page. 

Carter Page himself admitted to sharing nonpublic information with Rosnet but he insists this information just wasn’t too important-a central claim of the Dossier was that Page was offered a 19% stake in the Russian state oil company in exchange to persuading Trump to end sanctions.

Like clockwork the GOP co-conspirators browbeat Mueller about the Dossier at the hearing last week but Mueller handwaved them away by declaring the Dossier outside the scope of his mandate. I have to say while no doubt the GOP co-conspirators are asking about this for the wrong reasons-that won’t prove their fantastical claims of a Deep State Conspiracy-the Deep State only ‘elected’ this illegitimate ‘President’ this illegitimate ‘man’-I myself am curious: did Mueller’s investigation make any attempt to corroborate the Dossier which clearly was taken seriously enough to present it to Trump when he met with the intel chiefs back in January. 2017?

It really is a very interesting and important question. One explanation is that the FBI’s ongoing counterintelligence investigation Mueller referenced before Schiff’s HSPCI is focusing on the Dossier.