A juror in the trial of Paul Manafort said Wednesday that all but one of the jurors wanted to convict President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman on every charge he faced – though she criticized special counsel prosecutors as seeming “bored” throughout the trial and said she believed their true motive was to “get the dirt on Trump.”
The juror, who spoke on the record to Fox News and gave her name as Paula Duncan, said jurors “again and again” laid out for the lone holdout the evidence that persuaded them Manafort was guilty. But the holdout, a female, said she harbored reasonable doubt, Duncan said.
“The evidence was overwhelming,” Duncan said, pointing to prosecutors’ extensive paper trail. “I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty, but he was, and no one’s above the law.”
Jurors ultimately convicted Manafort of eight of the 18 charges he faced for bank fraud, tax fraud and failing to file reports of his foreign bank accounts, and could not reach consensus on the remaining 10. Prosecutors had accused Manafort of failing to pay taxes on roughly $15 million he earned working for a pro-Russian candidate in Ukraine, and of trying to defraud banks to obtain loans when his money from the candidate ran out.
Duncan, who identified herself as a supporter of Trump, is the first juror to speak publicly about the trial and the jury’s deliberations.
(c) 2018, The Washington Post · Matt Zapotosky
{Matzav.com}
Thank G-d for the jury system. If there would be at least one responsible juror to hold out against all victimless crimes, then the entire abusive machine would fail, haughty judges and slimy prosecutors would lose their power. Don’t evade the jury duty, and remember two words “jury nullification”.