The left's enforcers: CNN sues to reveal names and addresses of Manafort jurors

Less than a week after making a stink about freedom of the press, President Trump, and "enemies of the people," CNN and apparently other news outlets have decided to get into the harassment business, given that reporting news is just not good enough for them.

Seriously, they tried to do this:

In a motion filed in federal court on Thursday, CNN and several other media outlets requested that the court release the names and home addresses of all jurors in the Paul Manafort fraud case.  Jurors have not yet rendered a verdict on any of the 18 charges against Manafort, who briefly served as President Donald Trump's campaign manager in 2016.

The motion — filed on behalf of CNN, Washington Post, BuzzFeed, POLITICO, New York Times, NBC Universal, and the Associated Press — asks the court to provide to the media organizations the full names and home addresses of the men and women who were summoned and selected by the federal government to serve as jurors in Manafort's fraud case.

Wow.  So now they've gotten into the jury-tampering business.  They're more interested in who the jury is than the trial itself.

And that may well be because they suspect that Manafort, whose real crime seems to be serving as Donald Trump's campaign manager, will walk.

While I am not sure of that, given that the evidence that Manafort hid money a decade ago in a crime completely unrelated to his management of President Trump's campaign looks rather strong, three things stand out to me.

One: The judge told one of the frustrated prosecutors that he had tears in his eyes, which the guy didn't like, suggesting that he wasn't getting his way and he was unhappy about it.  Two: The Manafort team decided to rest its case without calling witnesses, which suggests they thought the case the determined prosecutors brought didn't look too good.  Three: One of the jurors asked the judge what the definition of "reasonable doubt" is.

All of that adds up to a case in trouble.  If it were I, and if the information reported in the news were the same as the information given to the jury, I'd let Manafort walk, given that they should have caught what he was doing a decade ago, not now.  The only reason they didn't bother was because one of the Podesta brothers was also involved, and apparently that meant protection for all of them – gag.  So prosecute the lazy prosecutors.  Because if prosecutors were serious about this case, they'd have done something a long time ago.  Since they weren't and the special counsel is on a witch hunt to Get Trump for political reasons, I'd send a message to the prosecutors that this is a political persecution, and Manafort deserves to walk.

But that's just me.  It's important to let the jury members who are right there decide, not the speculators on the outside, if we want to have a jury system worthy of the name.  To be fairer still, some juries really are awful; we all know cases that didn't seem to go the right way, starting with the skating of that illegal who shot Kate Steinle and moving right along to O.J.  It's unfortunately a feature of the system that we have to accept just because every alternative is less just still.  Most of us get this, and for that we leave juries alone.

This brings us right back to CNN and all its cartel press buddies seeking to doxx the Manafort jury and get the names and addresses right out there for everyone on Twitter to see.

...including Antifa.  Including the Bernie bros.  Including the Revolutionary Communist Party, which is responsible for a lot of the violence at riots.  Including the leftists who threw Sarah Sanders out of that restaurant.  Including the Justice Department charmer who led the scream-down at Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen at a restaurant where she was trying to eat.  Including the rabid leftists who beat up the Trump-supporters in San Jose as the cops stood by and did nothing.

Is CNN turning to muscle journalism in a bid to prop up ratings?  Will CNN seek to reveal the names and addresses of voters to find out whom they voted for next?

Oh, and note that this request takes place in the city of Alexandria, Virginia, home of shotgun political violence against Republican House leader Steve Scalise, who was nearly killed by aimed gunfire in a leftist assassination attempt while on a baseball field.  You can bet the jury knows about that one.  Lastly, note that the judge in the Manafort case has already been threatened by leftists.

It's nothing but a bid to jury-tamper to ensure that the jury votes the right way.  This, of course, is to convict no matter what the circumstances in the great bid to Get Trump.

Is it any wonder that, according to Power Line, this press move to publish the names and addresses of the jurors has left them scared?

They didn't volunteer for this.  They didn't ask to have their names and addresses published.  They are just doing their citizenship duty to serve on the jury and nothing else.  If they want to talk to the press and give their addresses afterward, they are completely free to do that.  And if they don't, that needs to be respected, too.  They shouldn't be forced to give the sleazy, politically motivated press all of that information, which is likely to cause major disruptions to their lives at a minimum, all for doing their civic duty.  Demanding their identities and addresses for the benefit of angry leftists is nothing but a bid to pressure them to vote a certain way.

Thank goodness the judge said no to that transparently political bid to tamper with and intimidate a jury.

What they are doing here is what Jean-Paul Marat, one of the French Revolution's bloodthirstiest leftists (this is where we get the term "leftist") used to do, which is use his press solely to target; harass; and, in his case, kill unpopular people in the name of left-wingery, or rather, la révolution.  As the press yells today that it's not the enemy of the people, it demonstrates that it's very much in the spirit of Marat.

This fits the current narrative perfectly.  Marat's bloodthirsty periodical, creepily enough, was called "The Friend of the People."

Image montage by Monica Showalter, using public domain pictures: Pexels, PixabayCC BY-SA 0.0.

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