Justice Integrity Report

Judge Sets Nov. 5 For Stone Trial, Refrains From Gag Sanction

A federal judge on Thursday scheduled for Nov. 5 Roger Stone's trial on charges that he tried to learn about stolen Democratic Party emails in 2016 at the direction of a senior but unnamed Trump campaign official and then illegally tried to keep those actions secret.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, presiding in Washington, DC, focused heavily on scheduling issues and refrained from sanctions for Stone's most recent alleged violation of her pre-trial gag order -- his republication of a book that sharply criticizes Special Counsel Robert S. robert mueller full face file Mueller III (left) and his probe of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The focus on planning for a trial expected to take two weeks and on the media clamor that Stone has generated tends to obscure the still-myserious drama at the core of the case:

Democratic Party secrets, some of them embarrassing and otherwise deeply harmful to the 2016 campaign, were systematically released by WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, thereby deflating the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton (right).

The overall impact was thus to benefit the campaigns of Trump and other Republicans.

Stone, who once seemed to brag about that process and his overall reputation as an effective political operative for decades willing to do what's necessary to win, has recently been portraying himself as a victim.

"I now find myself on Crooked Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's hit list because I've advised Donald Trump for the past forty years," Stone wrote in the book's introduction. "Clearly, I was targeted for strictly political reasons."

Mueller is a Republican career prosecutor who was nominated to become FBI Director in 2001 by Republican President Bush and to become special counsel by Trump. For those reasons, his defenders reject claims that the probe is partisan or otherwise unfairly anti-Trump.

The Justice Integrity Project attended the hearing. We observed that Stone, 66 (shown in a screenshot from TV interview), arrived shortly before the scheduled 9:30 a.m. hearing time and did not start through the security process until 9:34 a.m. The judge made no comment about the delay in the hearing's beginning.

The status hearing to plan pretrial issues occurred a day after the judge had sentenced 2016 Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort, Stone's former GOP lobbying partner during the 1980s, to a 7 1/2-year prison term for fraud, failing to register as a foreign agent, and obstruction of justice.

Manafort's term included 47 months of a concurrent sentence imposed by a Virginia federal court judge for Manafort's massive tax and bank fraud schemes extending for the most part from 2006 to 2016. Some criminal conduct occurred in 2017 and 2018.

amy berman jackson roger stone On Feb. 21, Jackson forbade Stone, President Trump's longtime friend and advisor, from publicly discussing his pending case after she told him that she did not believe his explanation of why he broadcast on the social media channel Instagram a photo of her with "crosshairs" next to her head.

Stone distributed the photo (shown at right) along with text implying that his judge was politically biased. The text also denounced Mueller's probe, which had resulted in Stone's indictment in January on seven felony charges relating to WikiLeaks' release of emails stolen in 2016 from the Democratic Party.

Last month, Stone received a stern warning and a tightened gag order from the judge after he apologized for the Instagram message, removed it from public view and said that he had not focused on the symbol at top left in the photo, which Stone characterized as a "Celtic cross" -- and not a symbol for a rifle's crosshairs.

Whatever the case, the "Celtic cross" has been adopted a symbol by some ultra-right organizations and the threat of murder against federal judges or other officials by disturbed, ultra-right Americans is far from theoretical.

Dangerous History

Former Navy intelligence officer Wayne Madsen reported on the scope of danger facing public officials in a Feb. 20 column Stone's threatening federal judge no laughing matter. "Since 1979," Madsen wrote, "four federal judges have been assassinated and the disabled husband and mother of another judge were murdered in an unsuccessful targeted assassination of the judge."

Madsen has reported on many assassinations and threats, including those generated by the alt-right. For example, he documented in his 2018 Wayne Madsen Report (WMR) column Shooter targeting Annapolis Capital-Gazette is an anti-press paranoid and Trump supporter how alt-right messaging appears vital to understanding the actions of an accused killer of five newspaper reporters.

Madsen's subscription-only column about Stone's implied threats, excerpted here with permission, continued:

In 2007, Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the same bench on which Berman Jackson serves, asked to be removed from the case involving Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called DC Madam, whose clientele list included some of Washington's most powerful political movers and shakers.

WMR's sources reported at the time that Kessler had been threatened because she showed an interest in revealing the "johns" on Palfrey's list of customers.

DC’s ‘Revolving Door’ Spun Smoothly for Manafort, But Not For Taxpayers

The massive coverage of former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort’s tax and bank fraud scandal during recent days has so far missed almost entirely one of its most shocking and important aspects.

paul manafort cnn How did Manafort (shown as campaign manager in 2016) get away with such brazen tax evasion and other corruption for so many years?

Manafort’s years of corruption were part of a scandalous breakdown by the U.S. Department of Justice in prosecuting wealthy and other otherwise politically influential criminals.

At long last, Manafort's remarkable greed exposed him to some of the many honest investigators within the department who have been empowered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecution of larger Trump campaign and administration scandals.

March 13 updates, as reported by the New York Times:

Paul Manafort Is Sentenced to 3.5 More Years in Prison, Sharon LaFraniere. Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, has been ordered to serve a total of seven and a half years in prison after a second federal judge added more time to his sentence on Wednesday, saying he “spent a significant portion of his career gaming the system.”
New York Charges Manafort With 16 Crimes. If He’s Convicted, Trump Can’t Pardon Him, March 13, 2019. The charges are part of an effort to ensure he will still face prison time if President Trump pardons him for his federal crimes.

The Washington Post explored the the Manafort defense team's strategy of echoing Trump's comments with this analysis:

Judge strongly rebukes Manafort’s — and Trump’s — ‘no collusion’ refrain, Aaron Blake, March 13, 2019. Judge Amy Berman Jackson made several strong statements before sentencing former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on Wednesday. But one, in particular, struck at the core of President Trump’s personal defense in the Russia investigation.

Manafort, 69, is a Connecticut-reared and DC-educated lobbyist, strategic consultant and fixer who spent decades helping prominent U.S. Republicans, some of the world's most horrific foreign dictators, and their supporters.

The mission? To win office, reap the fruits of power, and then hide the tens of millions of dollars in loot from taxing authorities for the benefit of insiders -- most relevantly, Manafort himself.

Manafort's 47-month prison sentence in Virginia’s federal court March 7 on corruption charges was a sweetheart deal compared to the scope of Manafort's crime and lack of repentance. The judge's sentence, demeanor at trial and sentencing, and possible motives deserve far more scrutiny than they have received so far.

Even so, the sentence prompted widespread criticism of the sentencing judge, Senior U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis, as exemplified in our own commentary in GOP Judge Disgraces Federal Bench In Manafort Sentence, Hearing.

kevin downing head portrait The breakdown in the nation's federal justice goes far beyond the "revolving door" whereby Manafort’s lead defense attorney, Kevin Downing (shown at left), had been a top Justice Department prosecutor supposed to be fighting hard against the kinds of tax frauds that Manafort was committing for years at the same time.

Today’s report, which includes an exclusive albeit brief interview with Downing, shows that the defense counsel and some of his Justice Department peers had a wider record of coddling well-connected criminals that, fortunately for the public, is beginning to prompt some scrutiny.

At the same time, Downing and the now-notorious former U.S. attorney in Miami Alexander Acosta (a presidentially appointed position supervising federal criminal and civil litigation in that region) also prosecuted former UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) banker Bradley Birkenfeld, one of the nation’s major whistleblowers against higher-ups committing the kinds of financial crimes so attractive to Manafort.

More recently, two members of Congress, former prosecutors Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice, both Democrats, have called for a New York State Bar Association probe of Downing for his alleged improper liaison work between Manafort and the Trump administration after his client’s guilty plea last September.

That arose from Manafort's deceitful and unremorseful liaison with Trump administration lawyers (most likely to curry favor for a Trump pardon that would constitute obstruction of justice) after Manafort pleaded guilty to federal charges last September and promised to cooperate with authorities.

GOP Judge Disgraces Federal Bench In Manafort Sentence, Hearing

A Republican-appointed federal judge imposed on March 7 one-fifth of the federal guideline sentence on former Trump 2016 Campaign Manager Paul J. Manafort Jr. for massive bank and tax frauds, thereby sending a national message that wealthy, politically well-connected defendants can cheat justice if they pursue decades of crime at a high-level and with the right legal and political connections.

thomas s ellis iii federal judge Senior U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis, III (shown at left in a file photo), appointed to the bench by Republican President Ronald Reagan, imposed Manafort's sentence 47-month sentence at the end of a three-hour hearing during which the judge also ordered restitution and ordered a fine of $50,000.

Trump defenders then leaped to expand on the judge's anti-prosecution sneers, which contrast with the judgment of a pro-Trump juror who explained post-trial that the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming.

The pro-defendant bias of Ellis, which had appeared sporadically during Manafort's trial last summer, became apparent during the sentencing hearing in several ways described below and most notably by the judge's conclusion that Manafort, aside from his convictions, had "otherwise led a blameless life."

Ellis's stunning sentence came after even he remarked that Manafort (shown at right in a mug shot) had failed to express regret for his crimes, which included concealing $55 million in income in 30 different overseas bank accounts to avoid income taxes. Manafort amassed his wealth in large part by serving foreign dictators accused of massive corruption, elections fraud, torture and other tyrannical behavior.

paul manafort mug The sentence, which will be reduced nine months to account for Manafort's pre-trial detention, was far too lenient, especially given the mind-boggling evidence of corruption by Manafort and his gang. Shocking also was Manafort's lack of remorse in his four-minute statement and his breach of trust on the global stage.

Decades ago, Manafort and such previous partners as Roger Stone and Lee Atwater helped pioneer a hybrid form of campaign work and lobbying that helped install officials and then exploited their powers on behalf of special interests.

Manafort's most recent consultancy partner was Rick Gates, who went on to obtain a high-ranking position with the Trump Inauguration Committee and become Deputy National Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee before being indicted on corruption charges and reaching a cooperation agreement with federal prosecutors.

The judge's demonstrable bias in serving as a pro-Manafort advocate at times during trial and during Thursday's hearing added to the charade of a honest judiciary supposedly functioning in the public interest.

This editor attended Thursday's hearing in Alexandria, Virginia, sitting about 25 feet behind Manafort. He sat in a wheelchair fo reasons largely undisclosed to the public and wore a dark green jail jumpsuit with the words "Alexandria Inmate" in big white letters signifying his pre-sentence detention.

That contrasted with luxury custom suits that Manafort had sported in decades as a high-level political lobbyist and strategist for GOP candidates and notorious dictators.

Before addressing below details of Thursday's hearing and the overall prosecution, we explain the tone of this column, including its headline.

konstantin klimnik The Justice Integrity Project is a non-partisan organization that has defended such GOP defendants as the late Alaskan Sen. Ted Stevens from Justice Department over-reach. We rarely ascribe partisan political motives to judges except in the most extreme cases. We focus mostly on reporting, not commentary.

But for this story, I draw on considerable reporting and legal experience (including nearly three decades as a member of the bar and previous experience as a federal judge's law clerk) to provide my opinion that Manafort's judge embarrassed himself and the federal system by his transparently biased hearing. The proceeding's flaws extend well beyond the shockingly light term and fine.

The judge said a fine higher than $50,000 might seem punitive -- for a criminal who spent a decade leading a crime gang avoiding taxes and committing bank frauds with the complicity global oligarchs. In one such investigative thread, authorities have said Manafort gave polling data on the 2016 campaign to Konstantine Kilimnik, right, a trainee of the Russian Ministry of Defense,

Kilimnik, according to House of Trump, House of Putin by Craig Unger, among others, began work for Manafort in 2005 when Manafort was representing the Ukrainian oligarch Akhmetov and who also opened a consulting firm in 2015 that had ties to Cambridge Analytica, the data firm that helped elect Trump.

The judge, with 32 years of experience on the federal bench, showed early in the case that he adopted the Trump line that Special Prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III was unfairly targeting Manafort. The judge had mocked prosecutors saying they didn't really care about Manafort's conduct because they only wanted to squeeze the defendant to pressure the president.

robert mueller full face file That judicial posture prompted so much public outrage early in the trial, as manifested in newspaper headlines, that Ellis kept his feelings largely under wraps after that until the sentencing hearing, where he made a great show of proceeding carefully and at length while ultimately minimizing the enormity of Manafort's crimes.

Most striking to this reporter was that the judge failed to reference Manafort's gross abuse of his high position of public trust as a presidential campaign manager who had taken the job for free with a clear-cut goal of using the position to sell influence to keep living in luxury..

Notable also was the judge's tolerance for Manafort's unwillingness to provide his financial information to the court's probation office so that the court could assess how many assets Manafort has available for a fine or restitution. It would have been simple for the judge to postpone sentencing until Manafort and his lawyers totaled up his millions of dollars in assets.

The judge's conduct went far beyond traditional political partisan politics and almost defies explanation. And that opens the door extremely sinister potential rationales, with the judge's motives potentially involving his role as a longtime "fixer" for sensitive legal disputes within the intelligence community, as amplified below.

The Sentence

Sentencing guidelines, based on sentences for similar crimes and the defendant's background, prompted court career officials to call for a recommended a term of 19.5 to 24 years for Manafort's crimes. Prosecutors said the calculation was correct but declined to call for a specific term. The judge congratulated them for that failure, saying that he would have held it against prosecutors had recommended a specific term.

The judge accepted the defense recommendation that he recommend to the Trump Justice Department that Manafort serve his sentence at the minimum security federal facility in Cumberland, Maryland. The judge rejected prosecution efforts to tap Manafort's homes worth more than $4 million for a fine, saying that $50,000 was enough punishment combined with restitution to victims.

kevin downing head portrait Afterward, lead defense counsel Kevin Downing, right, spun the media with a brief comment outside the courthouse claiming that the case proved, "most importantly" that Manafort was not involved with any "collusion" with any "Russian government official."

That is like the Trump administration claims of "no collusion." It is a half-truth deception at best that ignores how Manafort was heavily involved with other Russians who were well-connected to officials -- and that judge Ellis had forbidden any discussion of collusion during the trial.

Downing's comment failed to note also that prosecutors were keeping such information confidential to protect their ongoing investigation of corruption in the Trump administration and that a parallel prosecution occurred in the District of Columbia.

In September, Manafort pleaded guilty to two charges in that case that could bring him up to 10 more additional years in prison at sentencing next Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman. She could impose a term consecutive to that Ellis imposed on Manafort or a concurrent term.

In a column to be published over the weekend, we shall note separately below a brief and exclusive interview that we conducted with Downing regarding his previous career as a senior litigation counsel focusing on tax cheats. We asked him why he did not prosecute Manafort, his current client, for tax evasion when he had the chance.

U.S. Mainstream Media Propagandize Venezuelan Rebellion

News coverage of current political strife in Venezuela serves as a fresh reminder that U.S. mainstream newspapers and broadcasters too often deliver remarkably biased “news” reports on sensitive global topics.

The extreme bias in U.S. reports about Venezuela frequently appears also in coverage of such other topics as Syria, Palestine and Russia – regardless of repeated reassurances to audiences by the relevant outlets that they are committed to professional standards of fairness, accuracy and unbiased coverage.

Clearly, that’s not the case on certain topics.

The corporate media — including the prestigious newspaper outlets like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post — consistently portray leaders of Venezuela, Syria and Russia as bloodthirsty dictators with no semblance of popular appeal. That's despite independent evidence that they have won elections (unlike some tyrants counted as strong U.S. allies) and probably could continue to do so in fair elections, according to independent popularity polls and other evidence.

juan guaido nicolas maduro In the meantime, the U.S. and other Western media puff up opponents seeking to overthrow these governments while the "news" outlets show their support by minimizing negative coverage of opposition figures.

For example, Juan Guaidó (shown at left in the adjoining photo), the U.S.-anointed and self-declared “interim president” of Venezuela, has only a slender semblance of a constitutional right to seize power by the terms of his nation's constitution.

U.S. news reports typically describe Guaidó as head of his nation's National Assembly. But very few reporters delve deep enough to report his tiny plurarily of 26 percent in winning his seat or the enormous effort that the United States has exerted on his behalf, including via presssure on other governments and via CIA and other covert means in the tradition of the "Monroe Doctrine."

Similarly, U.S. audiences are rarely exposed to the dominance within Syrian rebels of Al Qaeda and similar radical Islamist factions associated with 9/11 attacks.

The intensely negative media coverage of Palestinians is obvious also in the mainstream media. But it falls into a different category because it is typically paired with a flip-side of fawning coverage of Israel and its leaders. Those patterns reoccur even when the result is for the media to ignore for the most part the human rights abuses involved in Israel’s keeping Gaza residents, in particular, virtually powerless in an open-air prison in horrid living conditions.

Syria, Russia, Palestine and Israel are mostly beyond the scope of this column. Instead, it provides samples of Venezuelan recent coverage. One example is the March 4 news story below filled with flattering comments about Guaidó and the reporter's scorn for President Nicolás Maduro, shown above at right. We offer also an explanation for this pattern:

First, the mass media are inherently susceptible to use for political advocacy, even deceitful advocacy (otherwise known as “propaganda”). That was true during the first years of the United States and it remains true today, as we shall see below in more detail.

Second, the concept of professional standards of fairness, fact-checking and rendering “news” and commentary as a civic service and not simply as a power-grab is being undermined by a variety of economic and political trends. The factors are too numerous to mention here. But, as indicated by our near-daily running account of Media News, the factors include the economic collapse of many news outlets because of web-related competition. That competition lessens costs of production / distribution for new entrants and siphons away advertising to such powerhouse competitors as Facebook and Google.

Finally, the so-called “marketplace of ideas” has always been more fragile than commonly understood. That's because the ultimate “marketplace” is not so much outlets selling to consumers, but a far more complex market whereby much of the revenue comes from advertisers or other power players who have agendas that are far more targeted than simply providing information in a neutral manner. These power players include those who seek natural resources and other assets via regime change, oppressive loans or war.

"While it is not possible for the media to tell the population what to think," as longtime commentator Ben Bagdikian once wrote (in a quotation that I used in my 1987 book Spiked about media self-censorship and economics), "they do tell the public what to think about."

To expand on the last point, traditional print media have typically relied on economic models whereby one-quarter or so of revenue might come from subscriptions and three quarters from advertising. For broadcasters, all revenue came from advertising, with lots of that income from political organizations during election years.

Social media like Facebook and related high-tech services like Google have many leaders who are intimately connected with Wall Street and the military-intelligence complex. They typically mingle at such elite gatherings as the Bilderberg and Davos conferences, took the process to its logical extreme whereby the customer does not typically pay anything and is instead the commodity whose attention and privacy being sold to purveyors of messaging.

Further complicating the media landscape, many brand name outlets known to consumers are owned by conglomerates with shifting and otherwise hard-to-discern agendas.

For example, AT&T has been reassembled in large part after once being broken up on antitrust grounds. It has recently acquired Time Warner with its array of content providers like CNN, TNT and HBO.

As reported by the New York Times on March 4 in AT&T Assembles a Media Team, Joining a Battle With Giants, "On Monday the company took a step closer to becoming something never before seen on the American corporate landscape — part telecommunications behemoth and part media-entertainment giant."