March 8, 2019
By Thomas LifsonJudge T.S. Ellis, a Reagan appointee to the Federal District Court for Eastern Virginia, is well known for speaking his mind. Yesterday, in sentencing Paul Manafort, he rebuked Team Mueller's harsh sentence recommendation of 19–24 years' imprisonment as "excessive," and instead set a lot of progressives' hair on fire by imposing a sentence of 47 months and recommended counting the nine months of time served (much of it in solitary confinement, imposed by Judge Amy Berman Jackson in a separate case in D.C. District Court) against that total, meaning just over three years of imprisonment.
Judge Ellis, who has read the still secret memos establishing the mandate for Team Mueller, also noted that Manafort is not being sentenced on anything related to Mueller's task...
...Bonchie of Red State well explains what Judge Ellis's remarks were aimed at accomplishing:
Judge Ellis also went out of his way today to publicly proclaim that Manafort's sentencing has nothing to do with "Russian collusion" or any other Democrat fever dream. The judge has been forceful on that aspect for a while, trying to ensure that no false narratives emanate from his court room.
That hasn't stopped the media from continuing to delve into ridiculous conspiracy theories, such as the idea that Manafort sharing personal polling data with a Russian associate somehow constitutes something illegal or nefarious. In reality, the most likely explanation is that Manafort, having known the associate for decades and needing money, was trying to gin up future lines of income by giving him access to the information. Regardless, nothing was illegal about the contact and it's simply served as yet another dead end to bat around on CNN and the pages of The New York Times.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/03/judge_ellis_rebuked_special_counsel_meuller_when_sentencing_paul_manafort.html
