Get out! He’s calling from INSIDE THE HOUSE!<\/b>
\nPaul Manafort has been out of jail (though under limited house arrest) while awaiting trial. That may be coming to an end if prosecutors can prove their latest allegation against him which is really quite a doozy. Manafort allegedly began attempting to contact witnesses in his case as soon as he was sent off to house arrest. That\u2019s a tremendous breach of protocol and casts a pall on the trial proceedings, at least giving the appearance of trying to rig the game in his favor. It also puts the witnesses in legal peril if they are found to be going along with the plan. This may wind up with Manafort losing his phone and messaging privileges by way of heading back to a prison cell. (NY Post)
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort made several attempts to tamper with witnesses in his ongoing criminal cases, prosecutors said Monday as they asked a federal judge to consider revoking his house arrest.
In a court filing, prosecutors working for special counsel Robert Mueller wrote that Manafort and one of his associates \u201crepeatedly\u201d contacted two witnesses in an effort to influence their testimony. The contacts occurred earlier this year, shortly after a grand jury returned a new indictment against Manafort and while he was confined to his home.
Court documents do not name Manafort\u2019s associate, but they refer to him as \u201cPerson A\u201d and note the pseudonym is consistent with previous filings in the case. In earlier filings, Person A has referred to Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime Manafort associate who prosecutors have said has ties to Russian intelligence.
If these stories prove to be accurate, Manafort was making calls and sending text messages using an encrypted application on his phone. This immediately raises a couple of questions. Manafort isn\u2019t just a political circus guy. He\u2019s a lawyer with a law degree from Georgetown. Is it even conceivable that he didn\u2019t know that he wasn\u2019t supposed to be talking to witnesses or potential witnesses under these circumstances? If so, the phrase \u201cgross incompetence and negligence\u201d comes to mind.
Even if we assume that he knew he wasn\u2019t supposed to be doing it, the guy was under house arrest. The fact that the government had been monitoring him was no longer a secret. What person with any experience in the law wouldn\u2019t suspect that the feds were tapping his phone and tracing all of his communications while awaiting trial? Either he\u2019s more suited to lead the Gang That Couldn\u2019t Shoot Straight or there\u2019s more to this story.
I\u2019m not really leaning one way or the other on that choice. Much of this allegedly happened in the early days after he was remanded to house arrest. Perhaps he was in a panic and not thinking clearly? Or maybe he was taking a chance and thinking they didn\u2019t have him set up for surveillance yet. Both would look like rookie mistakes in retrospect, but they at least become a bit more understandable. But this also represents yet another charge (and an extremely serious one at that) which could be leveled at Manafort at trial. Witness tampering can put you away for a long time. And now the next set of inevitable questions will be raised as to whether or not there\u2019s a pardon on the way from President Trump. If so, the game becomes exponentially more complicated.
In any event, if Manafort has to spend the rest of his time awaiting trial in a jail cell he\u2019ll have a lot more free time on his hands. Hopefully, they\u2019ll have a library with some legal texts he can browse and brush up on while he waits.<\/p>\n

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