The judge presiding over the bank and tax fraud trial of Paul Manafort, U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III, has drawn a lot of headlines for his constant prodding of the attorneys to proceed apace and his colorful commentary about everything from birthday cakes to the attorneys’ facial expressions and even demanding that the prosecutor make eye contact with him.
But on Tuesday, Ellis appeared to cross the line when he clearly weighed in for the defense’s side of the argument following an observation from Rick Gates, the prosecution’s star witness. As the New York Times originally wrote, "At one point, Judge T. S. Ellis III seemed to make the defense’s case more effectively than Mr. Downing," Manafort's defense lawyer.
When Mr. Gates asserted that Mr. Manafort “was very good at knowing where the money was and where it was going,” Judge Ellis pointed out that Mr. Manafort “didn’t know about the money you were stealing, so he didn’t do it that closely.”
In other words, while the prosecution was trying to make the case that Manafort was centrally involved with managing the finances for his business, Judge Ellis was downplaying how closely Manafort was really following the money. It was a moment former federal prosecutor and MSNBC commentator Barbara McQuade also took issue with.
"A jury hears that and sees this person as an independent, impartial decision maker who's an expert in the law—what are they supposed to take from that?" McQuade noted on MSNBC Tuesday. "I think he is far too involved in the case and could really throw a monkey wrench in the works for the prosecution."
Judge Ellis aside, there's still a lengthy and seemingly incontrovertible paper trail connecting Manafort to the financial crimes he is on trial for. And on the plus side for prosecution, Ellis appears to have reined in defense attorneys on several topics they would have liked to linger on: the fact that Manafort and Gates worked for the Trump campaign (the prosecution wants to avoid a pro-Trump juror from viewing Manafort’s charges as politically motivated) and Gates’s extramarital affairs (the defense introduced the prospect Wednesday that Gates had four affairs to further destroy his credibility). In both cases, Judge Ellis immediately blocked defense attorneys from drawing out those discussions.
But with his prejudicial observation on Tuesday, Ellis moved from being an entertaining and sometimes annoying scold with a tight grip on the court room to becoming a potential foil for the prosecution.
As MSNBC national security reporter Ken Dilanian observed: "I don’t think this is how it’s supposed to work."
