Paul Manafort Is In the Gray Bar Hotel

Paul Manafort’s new LinkedIn photo.

Paul Manafort has homes in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Hamptons, Florida, and Virginia, but he’ll spend the summer in federal jail. His bail was revoked after he was caught tampering with witnesses in one of his two federal trials, resulting in new charges of Obstruction of Justice and Conspiracy. He’s due in federal court in Virginia on July 25th. His second trial in DC is slated for September 17th.

More:

“Paul Manafort is in the klink. It’s OK to be pleased,” Virginia Heffernan, Los Angeles Times

“Judge Orders Paul Manafort Jailed Before Trial, Citing New Obstruction Charges,” Sharon LaFraniere, New York Times

“From ‘the Count’ to inmate: The fall of former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort,” Tom Hamburger, Washington Post

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Kim Davis: Resurrection?

Intolerant Kentucky County Clerk Kimberly Jean Bailey Davis will be running for reelection in 2018. Ms. Davis was imprisoned in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She was sprung after a federal judge determined that her deputy clerks were doing the work she shirked, providing equal justice under the law by issuing civil marriage licenses to all couples. Ms. Davis’s unconstitutional stunt cost the State of Kentucky $224,000 in court costs.

Kim Davis believes in marriage so strongly she’s had four of them. Her twins, born five months after her divorce from her first husband, were sired by her third husband and adopted by her fourth husband, who was also her second husband.

And family values are what the Rowan County Clerk’s Office is all about. When she was elected in 2014, Kim Davis hired her son to work in her county government office, just like her own mother, Rowan County Clerk for 37 years, had hired her. If Mrs. Davis ever decides to abdicate, surely her son will inherit the family business.

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Saint Kim of Kentucky Rescued From the Dungeon!

Free at last! Intolerant Rowan County Clerk Kimberly Jean Bailey Davis was sprung from Kentucky’s Carter County Detention Center on Tuesday. U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning determined that her deputy clerks were doing the work she shirked, providing equal justice under the law by issuing civil marriage licenses to all couples. The judge enjoined Mrs. Davis from preventing her deputies from performing her office’s official duties in issuing marriage licences to same-sex couples.

Mrs. Davis and her delusional lawyer claim that marriage licenses not issued by her are invalid. As Zack Ford points out, Kentucky statute 61.035 indicates otherwise: “Any duty enjoined by law or by the Rules of Civil Procedure upon a ministerial officer, and any act permitted to be done by him, may be performed by his lawful deputy.”

Martyr to the Cause of Intolerance

Rowan County Clerk Kimberly Jean Bailey Davis was led off by federal marshals, fingerprinted and photographed, and locked behind bars in the Carter County Detention Center in Grayson, Kentucky. Federal District Court Judge David L. Bunning found her in contempt for refusing his order to comply with the 14th Amendment and perform her sworn duty, issuing civil marriage licenses to same-sex couples. “Ms. Davis took an oath,” he said. “Oaths mean things.” She can get out when she agrees to provide equal protection under the law.

The judge chose not to fine Mrs. Davis, since her equally intolerant supporters would raise the money for her and she would feel no sense of compulsion to obey the law. Some Davis fans tried to set up a fundraising website for her, but GoFundMe’s policy forbids campaigns that aid any criminal defense. That doesn’t keep them from thinking of Kim Davis as the homophobe Rosa Parks, though.

Bob McDonnell Corruption Conviction Upheld

A three judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the political corruption conviction of disgraced former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell so, pending further appeal to the full U.S. Fourth Circuit Court, he’s going to the slammer for 2 years. He’s lucky; based on Federal Sentencing Guidelines he could have gotten at least 10 years in prison.

During the initial trial ex-Gov. McDonnell, devoted husband and father of five, explained the $150,000 in loans, vacations, golf outings and luxury goods Virginia’s First Couple took from a snake-oil salesman for promoting his dubious nostrums by blaming it all on his screaming lunatic harridan of a wife, Maureen McDonnell. That defense was not successful.

Understandably, Mr. McDonnell left his conjugal home and has been staying at the rectory of Richmond’s St. Patrick’s Church with a sympathetic priest who’s had legal problems of his own. His estranged wife, former NFL Cheerleader Maureen McDonnell, was convicted on 8 counts and sentenced to a year and a day in the hoosegow.

Due to these circumstances, Bob McDonnell is perhaps the only prominent Republican not running for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. Yet.

More:

“Official Acts,” Dahlia Lithwick, Slate

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A Year and a Day in Prison for Maureen McDonnell

Maureen McDonnell, former NFL cheerleader and estranged wife of disgraced former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell, has been sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison for her conviction on 8 felony counts of corruption. The former First Lady of the Old Dominion accepted lavish gifts from nutritional supplement manufacturer Jonnie Williams and helped him shill his snake oil, even staging a promotional event at the state’s Executive Mansion.

Mr. McDonnell, the first Virginia governor convicted of committing a felony while in office, has been sentenced to 2 years in prison and 2 years of federally supervised release for convictions on 11 counts of political corruption. Mr. &  Mrs. McD are both on the loose while appealing their convictions, and the ex-Governor is bunking with his parish priest.

Bob McDonnell Gets 2 Years in the Big House

Disgraced former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, convicted of 11 counts of political corruption, was sentenced to 2 years in prison and 2 years of federally supervised release today. Prior to his arrest, many Republicans had proposed Mr. McDonnell for federal office, not a federal prison cell. In December the U.S. probation office had recommended at least 10 years in prison, and Pat Robertson’s charity had tried to wangle a no-prison-time community service deal.

Mr. McDonnell will enter the pokey on February 9th. His estranged wife, former NFL Cheerleader Maureen McDonnell, who was ultimately convicted on 8 federal counts, will be sentenced on January 20th. In another big Republican crime story today, Rep. John Boehner was sentenced to 2 years as House Majority Leader.

Related:

“Unforgivable: The Governor and the Teen-ager,” Evan Osnos, The New Yorker

Updates:

“Court: Ex-Virginia Gov. McDonnell will be free during appeal,”  Michael Felberbaum, Associated Press

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