At first I just skimmed this Fox News story about one of the jurors on the Paul Manafort trial and I was like “why did she speak to Fox News of all outlets?” As it turns out, this juror is a MAGA-hat wearing, Fox-News-watching, witch-hunt-proclaiming Trump supporter. And even she wanted to convict Paul Manafort on all 18 counts. She told Fox News last night that the reason it took the jury so long to get a verdict was that there was ONE holdout who claimed to have “reasonable doubt.” This is somewhat fascinating:
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team was one holdout juror away from winning a conviction against Paul Manafort on all 18 counts of bank and tax fraud, juror Paula Duncan told Fox News in an exclusive interview Wednesday.
“It was one person who kept the verdict from being guilty on all 18 counts,” Duncan, 52, said. She added that Mueller’s team of prosecutors often seemed bored, apparently catnapping during parts of the trial. Duncan described herself as an avid supporter of President Trump, but said she was moved by four full boxes of exhibits provided by Mueller’s team – though she was skeptical about prosecutors’ motives in the financial crimes case.
“Certainly Mr. Manafort got caught breaking the law, but he wouldn’t have gotten caught if they weren’t after President Trump,” Duncan said of the special counsel’s case, which she separately described as a “witch hunt to try to find Russian collusion,” borrowing a phrase Trump has used in tweets more than 100 times.
“Something that went through my mind is, this should have been a tax audit,” Duncan said, sympathizing with the foundation of the Manafort defense team’s argument. She described a tense and emotional four days of deliberations, which ultimately left one juror holding out. Behind closed doors, tempers flared at times, even though jurors never explicitly discussed Manafort’s close ties to Trump.
“It was a very emotionally charged jury room – there were some tears,” Duncan said about deliberations with a group of Virginians she didn’t feel included many “fellow Republicans.”
A political allegiance to the president also raised conflicted feelings in Duncan, but she said it ultimately didn’t change her decision about the former Trump campaign chairman.
“Finding Mr. Manafort guilty was hard for me. I wanted him to be innocent, I really wanted him to be innocent, but he wasn’t,” Duncan said. “That’s the part of a juror, you have to have due diligence and deliberate and look at the evidence and come up with an informed and intelligent decision, which I did.”
The good news for Trump is that white women like Paula Duncan still support him. The bad news is that many of them are still capable of basic reasoning and logic and that’s all it took to convict Manafort. I wonder about the sole holdout – some legal analysts mused that if Vladimir Putin could gain access across the board to our election, then why wouldn’t he be able to gain access to one little old juror? It’s frightening to think about. Also, I’ll sort of give Duncan this: “Certainly Mr. Manafort got caught breaking the law, but he wouldn’t have gotten caught if they weren’t after President Trump.” I think she’s right. The only way that Manafort could have avoided this is… if Hillary Clinton won the presidency. For real.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Getty, Avalon Red.
I would have become violent at the idiot holdout.
I know, right? Must have been maddening af.
The judge and jury received threats. Who threatened them? No one has answered this question. Could very well be Putin.
Yeah, as someone on twitter said yesterday, if only Trump had lost they’d all still be happily able to continue committing their crimes.
I grudgingly give her credit for seeing past her Bigly loyalty and respecting the rule of law. I’d also like to think Manafort might’ve eventually been caught anyway but she’s probably right.
White collar crime is hardly prosecuted in this country. So yes, all of these crooks and liars would still be doing crimes if it wasn’t for Trump. His presidency is the worst thing to happen to almost everyone around him, and possible Trump himself. I still don’t think he’ll ever be removed from office. But once he leaves, he could face some serious legal issues.
“if only Trump had lost they’d all still be happily able to continue committing their crimes.”
I had been thinking about that a LOT lately, and I think that is only adding to 45’s anxiety/restlessness/whatever you want to call it.
he wanted to win, but he didn’t REALLY want to win. he wanted to beat HRC (and by proxy, Obama) but he didn’t REALLY want the job. and I think he’s started to realize how much he could still be getting away with had he NOT won…like, he didn’t expect the srutiny. and now, he doesn’t want to resign and come off like a “LOSER! QUITTER!” but he wants out. hopefully the conflict going on inside him will be detrimental to his health.
I give her a lot of credit. She took her responsibilities as a juror very seriously and set aside her political preferences. That’s the kind of person we want on juries.
The holdout did vote to convict on 8 counts. I doubt she was bribed or threatened on the rest. She had reasonable doubt and she voted as needed.
Is the sentencing before or after the deadline for the prosecution to decide if they will ask for a new trial on the 10 counts? If they don’t pursue a new trial, the fact that only one juror blocked consensus might be taken into account by the judge in sentencing. He has that leeway.
Also if the prosecution decides to retry him on those ten counts, they have a really good chance of conviction. They had even convinced a serious Trump supporter, after all….
Keep in mind that Manafort (and other Russians) in Trump Tower were already getting wire tapped prior to Trump starting his run for the presidency. I think he would eventually have gone down for something, but his stupidity in applying for that commercial loan as quid pro quo for getting the bank president a Secretary of the Army position meant that the FBI focused on him. The smart mob bosses are the ones you never hear about, who are too smart to manage the political campaign for the most prominent political position on the planet.
Well… I think this interview is a good future glimpse of how trump supporters will rationalize finding everyone around him guilty while absolving the orange one himself of any wrong doing when the final indictments come.
Other than that I don’t understand why she came forward with the news. Half the country (that’s paying attention) will think she’s an idiot, and the other half are in the midst of typing out death threats towards her for not protecting the president enough.
Trump wasn’t on trial so she wasn’t viewing the evidence against him personally. She did seriously examine the evidence against Manafort and even though she had hoped he would be cleared, she saw that he was guilty guilty guilty and voted to convict on all 18 counts.
And definitely Manafort would be continuing his criminal activities unchallenged if not for the focus on Trump and his campaign in the Russia investigation. But as Bill Clinton discovered, a special counsel has the right to follow up on other criminal activity discovered during the investigation. Even though Clinton’s crimes were minor and a bit iffy actually and really didn’t warrant what happened, still the special counsel had the right to pursue them. That also told everybody with functioning brain cells that they didn’t have anything else on Bill, though, despite the right wing mythology about the Clintons that persists to this day.
This is a good juror with a functioning brain. The fact that all but one juror voted to convict on all 18 counts was going to come out anyway – the tally apparently is public record. I almost wonder if the jurors asked her to speak publicly because 1) she’s fearless, 2) she’s articulate, and 3) she’s a real Trump supporter. Maybe they wanted people to know how solid the evidence against Manafort really was and were frustrated that they had no consensus on 10 counts. They worked really hard on this case.
As long as the crime was discovered legally, prosecution moves forward, regardless of it’s trump or not.
Going after the president? Nope, following the bread crumbs of evidence of illegal activities, period, end of sentence.
Someone got to that juror. It should be investigated.
That has been my “fear” for all these trials. All the RNC/ Putin needs to do is get to ONE juror. That’s it. And that juror’s background, bank accounts, family accounts should be looked into. Anyone offered a job/raise recently? Any big purchase in the near future? Check it out.
I doubt someone got to that juror. There are now generations that have been – in effect – groomed to vote against their own interests and reject truth and rationality and logic as some sort of conspiracy.
The juror had reasonable doubt on 10 counts but voted to convict on 8 counts. Doesn’t sound like a contaminated juror, just one who votes her conscience. Which is what I want in a juror.
This information will affect the prosecution’s decision on whether to retry Manafortnon the 10 counts. Maybe they need to explain reasonable doubt better in a new trial.
I wouldn’t want to be on a jury myself, I’d be too nervous about it all. I have trouble deciding the color of my socks every day, which is why I have tried to have only one color available for decades….
It did not matter if they didn’t get all the convictions because the 8 they agreed on is enough to put him away. Obviously the lone hold out found some reason not to convict on the remaining 10.
This is an example of how the jury system works. This lady is pro Orangino but even she wanted to convict on 18.
Next time they should sequester the jury as a precaution.
While luckily this trump fanatic was able to be reasonable in the end, you let out the part that made me have to put down my coffee so I didn’t break the mug in my fist:
“Echoing arguments made by both Manafort’s lawyers and Trump, Duncan said that the charges seemed to be politically motivated, and accused prosecutors of trying “to make the case about the Russian collusion right from the beginning.”
“Every day when I drove, I had my Make America Great Again hat in the backseat,” she told Fox. “Just as a reminder.” ”
HOW does bias like this not get weeded out of a jury??? This person drives around with campaign merchandise in her car and she’s on the jury FOR THE FORMER MANAGER OF THAT CAMPAIGN! How much would you bet the holdout juror was at trumps klan rally the night the verdict was handed down?
It’s only 10am and I’m done, you guys. I need to look at pictures of kittens.
I am also baffled at this – how was her insane devotion to Trump and his MAGA crew A) not discovered during jury selection, and B) did not disqualify her?
I suppose that since all of the crimes Manafort was trial for predated his association with Trump, you could argue that it wasn’t relevant to the proceedings.
Exactly he wasn’t on trial of the Russian connection/campaign. This was solely a tax evasion trial. That’s the easiest way to get to these people. Convicting them on tax fraud. It worked for Capone.
I’m surprised there weren’t one or two more like this one and the holdout. The jurors went home each evening and were also exposed to Bigly tweetfests and 100 pundits on TV. The judge also seemed biased.
The defense didn’t even bother to put anyone on the stand, yet she mentions tired-looking prosecutors?
I don’t think the judge was biased. He was trying to keep the trial on track, focused on the actual charges, and he doesn’t tolerate grandstanding from anybody. He also was concerned about keeping the jury undistracted and unbiased. Everybody hates the referee when the call doesn’t go their way, but that doesn’t mean the referee is biased.
This judge could have called a mistrial due to lack of consensus, but instead allowed the 8 convictions and declared mistrial (hung jury) only on the other 10 counts. That doesn’t sound like bias to me. He knew the vote tallies by then and realized only one juror did not agree to conviction on the 10 counts, so I think he also was concerned about acknowledging the sense of the jury in general (which was to convict on all 18 counts). This gave the prosecution 8 clear convictions and the option to retry with a new jury on the other 10, with high odds of success.
I just can’t understand how she managed to make as ‘good’ of a judgement as she did. If she’s that pro-trump that she keeps the hat in the car and is repeating witch hunt crap… I’m surprised she actually looked at the details of the case and based her decision on the actual facts.
The question would have been asked during jury selection so she must have lied. She’s also giving prosecutors helpful info because they will tighten their MAGA questions to weed more of them out. It’s also possible that she sees the profit in playing the MAGA role and going to fox. She will get money for interviews. In the end she did convict him on some counts.
In many countries jurors remain a secret and are never allowed to speak to the media about what was discussed. So they can’t profit from it. This exception in the US is a weakness that could be exploited.
NIC19- she convicted him on ALL 18 counts. There was just one juror who said she still has reasonable doubt on 10 of the counts. The others tried to convince her that Manafort was guilty guilty guilty with no success.
Just being a fan of the current President is not grounds for excluding someone from a jury any more than being a non-fan would be. This was a trial that was independent of Trump and dealt with the sins of Manafort, not the sins of Trump.
Are you folks here on CB really suggesting that anybody who likes Trump should been bounced from this jury? What do you propose as an alternative? Insisting that only anti-Trumpers are allowed? There aren’t too many people in between these days. People have opinions and they vote for one person or the other. What matters in a jury is whether or not they can set politics aside and vote on the actual evidence. Which she did.
“The question would have been asked during jury selection so she must have lied.”
No, they weren’t allowed to ask about voting history during jury selection.
she probably didn’t divulge how ardent a supporter of Trump she was (and I gather doesn’t have much of a public social media footprint directly linked to her name)
that said, her coming out saying even she voted guilty on all 18 charges and there was only 1 lone holdout on 10 of the charges should be a sign to Manafort & his attorney’s that it’s time to deal with the feds. He has another trial coming up mid-September and can be re-tried on the remaining 10 charges as well. He wants to limit jail time and wants to protect some financial assets for his family. I also think I heard there’s a chance his wife can be implicated so that should be motivation for him to deal as well
They weren’t allowed to ask questions about voting during jury selection.
I was surprised that the jury was not sequestered during their deliberation. I know it is expensive to do that, but how could they not hear or read on social media about the trial. Did you notice during their time of deliberation Trump was tweeting or making statements about how nice Manafort was.
Rachel Maddow asked the same question of an expert, who replied that no jury has ever been sequestered in federal court and it’s very rare in state courts. The judge did the normal thing – told the jury to avoid any mention of the case and to tell him if they accidentally overhear anything. Then he would decide if he needed to replace the juror with one of the 4 alternates (who are listening to everything the whole time so they are ready to jump in). It’s an honor system that has been used with juries for ages.
Sequestering is expensive and very difficult for jurors – you are asking them to be away from family and friends and pets and their own work for weeks or even months. It is likely to encourage hasty deliberations just to get out of there. I think the lawyers are the ones who ask for sequestering, and none of them apparently wanted it. If they felt it was beneficial for their case, they would have requested it.
And I don’t see why people are jumping on this juror for being a Trump supporter. She obviously is intelligent and took her job as juror seriously. You can’t pack a jury with people who have your own politics. You just need people who can look at the facts of the case despite politics, which is certainly true of her.
I wonder if her views will change on Trump as more and more concrete evidence comes out about all he and his minions have been doing. It all boils down to whether or not you believe the source of information. I don’t know what she finds compelling about Trump myself, but she sounds like a thinking person who can be convinced otherwise if she gets information she decides is reliable. She had hoped Manafort was innocent, but voted for full conviction on all 18 counts. She examined the evidence and concluded that the charges were accurate.
Certainly Manafort became a target after joining Trumps campaign but what’s galling is the insane amount of hubris! With all of the shady dealings w/Ukraine, hiding money to avoid taxes and borrowing huge sums of money from oligarchs ( and then stiffing them ) How in the world did he expect this wouldn’t be exposed.
He’s been in politics for decades! Having been presented with the financial disclosure form alone should have been enough of a red flag to send him running for the hills!
I think since he was in the business of doing corrupt dealings with governments he just expected said corrupt government to cover for him if anything came out
It’s also why he’s getting multiple trials this fall, isn’t it? The money-laundring trial will start later this year and will be very interesting. At some point, I certainly hope that everybody gets caught, it’s just surprising it took so long to catch Manafort
Manafort probably didn’t think Trump would win but would present opportunities to make quick cash. He was not in good financial condition. That’s why it was so odd that he offered to manage the campaign for free, although of course that was an attraction for cheapskate Trump. But Manafort knew he would be compensated in other ways, especially by Russia. He directed the successful attempt to soften the plank on support for Ukraine against Russia in the Republican platform, for example.
MAGAts are so fucking frustrating
I completely agree with the ones who questioned how Duncan passed vetting. That is serious bias.
However, it would be a challenge to find anyone not biased one way or another when it involves Trump. This has been such a polarising Presidency.
Jurors are supposed to be representative of the community. A certain percentage of the community supports Trump. It would be biasing the jury to keep them off the jury.
She proves that you can be a Trumper while still having brain in gear. That probably was evident in the preliminary questioning.
The important story is that she voted to convict on all 18 counts, and so did everybody else except one person (who voted to convict only on 8 counts). That’s a significant warning to Manafort and also Trump if he is thinking about pardoning the guy. He will have to explain himself to people like this Trump supporter who saw all the evidence and voted to convict. She may not be too happy about Trump dismissing her well informed decision like that, and she won’t be afraid to say so loudly.
She was sad there weren’t more MAGAts on the jury? Heads up, lady – you guys are a minority in the country, but especially in NOVA.
That’s the whole thing. If he did not run or win they would have kept on cheating god knows what and no one would know. If someone wants to blame someone for this they can blame Orange Nazi.