Buried, as you might expect, in this in this hit piece, [1] is this gem:
In a separate motion, prosecutors also asked the judge to prevent Manafort from raising the issue of an Internal Revenue Service audit, saying any potential civil action was irrelevant to the criminal charges and could confuse or mislead the jury.
A tip of the hat to Jerry Saperstein who says;
There’s been scanty reporting on the history, but apparently the IRS investigated these allegations years ago, may have issued a criminal referral, but DOJ declined to prosecute.
The implications are obvious: if the DOJ found nothing to prosecute more than a decade ago, what is Fascist coup meister Mueller chasing now? What changed – other than the political situation?
Assuming a potentially reasonable, intelligent jury, the appearance of this being a political prosecution (which this clearly is) might be all that is required to scuttle the chances for a conviction.
Exactly so. And let’s examine this from another angle. If we were really all that worried about Manafort and his taxes and so on, why is it that Al Sharpton who owes the IRS millions of dollars it’s still walking around free?
And by the way should we be asking how Mueller manage to amass 18 million dollars of net worth on a prosecutors salary?