A juror in Paul Manafort’s financial fraud trial says a lone holdout prevented the jury from convicting the onetime Trump campaign chairman on all 18 counts.
Jurors repeatedly tried to persuade the holdout to “look at the paper trail” but she insisted there was reasonable doubt, juror Paula Duncan told Fox News.
“We didn’t want it to be hung, so we tried for an extended period of time to convince her,” Duncan said, adding that the four days of deliberations were so heated that there were “tears” among the 12 jurors. “But in the end, she held out and that’s why we have 10 counts that did not get a verdict.”
So just one juror spared Manafort 10 more guilty counts.
The juror talking about the proceeding is a Trump fan, where's a MAGA hat on Fox, etc, and she had Manafort guilty on all 18 counts and tried to persuade the lone holdout.
She also said the jury “agreed to throw out the testimony” of Manafort protege Rick Gates, who pleaded guilty in Mueller’s investigation and agreed to cooperate with investigators, and focus instead on the documents.
I don't know how accurate her assessment is, but it's always interesting how jurors go about their deliberations.
Gates was the key witness and gave the most damning testimony and had all the inside knowledge. And they just put all that aside? hmm.
I remember years back there was a case where a father was on trial for killing his child. And the jurors were given a walk-through tour of the house/scene of the crime. And the jurors ended up convicting the father largely based on some holes punched in the walls and a door, as it convinced them he was easily enraged and violence-prone. Something which wasn't even intentional evidence was decisive (according to the jurors post-trial).
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