So many strands of nefarious doings that it is hard to keep one's sense of humor. Yesterday, after a brief trial that was marked more by the judge's interference than by legal brilliance, the Manafort case was given to the jury. Despite repeatedly telling the defense that they could not rely on special counsel accusations nor hint of any tie to the Trump notion of a witch hunt, the defense went ahead and said that this was a selective prosecution caused by the government's obsession with destroying Trump. Judge Ellis who twice had to be reminded of his errors during the trial (once for reversing his own statement about a witness remaining in court and once for ignoring the statute that governed the bank fraud), was overly mild in telling the jurors that they shouldn't try to impute any motive to the government's prosecution. In some ways that is okay since Manafort has another trial starting next month but it is beyond shocking that a judge could be so manifestly prejudicial to one side.
Yesterday Trump revoked John Brennan's security clearance. Initially he claimed that he was doing so as a precaution to keep US security agencies safe. But then Trump, who wouldn't recognize truth or irony if they jumped up and bit his fat pink cheeks, told the Wall Street Journal that he stripped the clearance because he saw Brennan as one of the instigators of the "witch hunt". Since Trump doesn't even believe his own intelligence agencies, it is risible that he wants to protect them. Then it underscores again, as if anyone with any semblance of intelligence needed the reminder, that Trump cannot tell the truth to save his soul or shame the devil.
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