Old White Dude Rules<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Federal Judge of the Eastern District of Virginia TS Ellis has been on the bench since his appointment in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan. He is seventy-nine years old, a \u201csenior Judge\u201d in the Federal Court system. When he was appointed to the Bench, the number one song was \u201cWalk Like an Egyptian<\/em>,\u201d the top movie \u201c3 Men and a Baby<\/em>\u201d and the top TV show, \u201cThe Cosby Show.\u201d<\/em> Less than 20% of homes in the US had personal computers, with most of those computers built by IBM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s called the \u201cRule of Eighty.\u201d After a judge has reached the age of sixty-five, if they can add their age and their years of service on the Federal Bench together and reach eighty, they can take \u201cSenior Judge\u201d status. This allows them to continue on the Bench, working part-time, and still draw their judicial salary. Prior to \u201cSenior\u201d standing being established in 1919, judges either had to serve full-time or resign. Today judges do have the option of full retirement as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the \u201cRule of Eighty,\u201d Judge Ellis is at one hundred and eleven. He has been on \u201cSenior Status\u201d since 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Judge Ellis has tremendous academic credentials; Bachelors in Engineering from Princeton, Magna-cum-Laude from Harvard Law, and an additional Law Degree from Oxford University. He presided over high profile cases in his career, including John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban (sentenced to twenty years); and Khalid El-Masri, who sued the CIA for rendition and torture (case dismissed.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Judge Ellis also presided over the corruption trial of former Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson, where $90,000 was found in a freezer in the Congressman\u2019s Virginia home. The money was part of a bribe paid by an FBI informant. Jefferson claims that he was cooperating with an FBI sting of foreign officials, but a jury found the Congressman guilty on eleven of sixteen counts of bribery and corruption, and Ellis sentenced him to thirteen years in Federal prison (subsequent to the Supreme Court ruling in McDonnell v United States, Jefferson appealed, and was ultimately released after five and a half years.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Most recently, Judge Ellis presided over the Eastern District trial of Paul Manafort, brought by the Special Counsel\u2019s office of Robert Mueller.\u00a0\u00a0From the pre-trial hearings, Ellis expressed his skepticism towards the Special Counsel; commenting that the eighteen charges against Manafort, from tax evasion (over $6 million owed) to defrauding the United States, did not include any conspiracy charges with Russia.\u00a0\u00a0Ellis, in open Court, decried that if Manafort hadn\u2019t had a role in the Trump campaign, the other charges wouldn\u2019t have been brought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ellis seriously entertained a defense motion to reject the charges, based on the limited authority of the Special Counsel to investigate the Russia matter. However, after deliberating for several days, he found that Mr. Mueller was acting within his scope of authority. That ruling didn\u2019t seem to alter Ellis\u2019s antipathy towards the Special Counsel\u2019s office though, and prosecution lawyers faced continuing interruptions and restrictions from the judge throughout the proceedings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Manafort was a long-time Republican operative from his beginnings in the Nixon campaign (along with his friend and business associate, Roger Stone.) Manafort worked for Ford, Reagan, George HW Bush and Dole, as well as taking his \u201ctalents\u201d overseas. The firm of Black, Manafort and Stone served as political consultants to dictators and despots in Africa, and later in the former Soviet Union. It had been since the Dole campaign that Manafort was involved in US politics, but he volunteered himself to the Trump Campaign, and quickly was appointed Chairman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The jury found Manafort guilty of eight of the eighteen counts, the other ten counts were declared a mistrial \u2013 a single juror voting against conviction (That juror later admitted that she was influenced by the President\u2019s tweets about the trial being a \u201cwitch hunt.\u201d)<\/em> According to Federal sentencing guidelines, Manafort could have been sentenced to up to twenty-four years in prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Judge Ellis sentenced him to four years, with nine months already served. When questioned about his departure from the guidelines, Ellis stated: <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Court also has to take account of the guidelines. They’re not mandatory, but they’re advisory. These guidelines are quite high. They provide for a sentence that is from 19 to 24 years, roughly. I think that sentencing range is excessive. I don’t think that’s warranted in this case.\u201d<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And in determining the sentence of Manafort, convicted of a pattern of criminal activity going back over a decade:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe defendant is a Category I in criminal history; that is, he has no criminal history. He is a graduate of a university and law school here, Georgetown for both, and he’s lived an otherwise blameless life. And he’s also earned the admiration of a number of people, all of whom have written the Court about him.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Congressman Jefferson must have been ineligible for the \u201cblameless life\u201d status, nor was his Bachelors from Southern, Law Degree from Harvard, and Masters in Law from Georgetown good enough to qualify for the Ellis \u201cdiscount.\u201d Of course, the disgraced Member already had two strikes against him: he was a Democrat, and he was black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is certain that Judge Ellis was doing what he thought was just towards Jefferson and Manafort. The Judge did not take a bribe, or is some other way violate the law. He seemed to operate on two principles in his sentencing: his open disagreement with the authority of the Special Counsel, despite his ruling to the contrary, and his empathy for the wheelchair bound Manafort, struck from the highest levels of American political life. That would be the \u201cold white dude\u201d rule; the obvious standard of judgment throughout the American judicial system. Ask the former Congressman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"