Manafort will read this court filing and weep. You'll read it and laugh.
I 
and 
whoever wrote this. So much dry legal humor.
One of Manafort's attorneys should have warned Manafort that, while their own calls to him would be unmonitored, his calls with other people could end up being quoted in a court filing that he might regret.
For example, Manafort has requested that his July trial be moved to Roanoke, where more than 60% of the voters chose DT, instead of Alexandria, where more than 60% voted for Hillary. That would be more fair, he thinks. (Oddly, he isn't requesting that his DC trial be moved, even though DC is much more Democratic than Alexandria.) He also wants his Alexandria/Roanoke trial to be moved to AFTER the D.C. trial in September. He told someone in a phone call that he might win this way even "in failure."
MY GUESS is he figures he will lose in D.C., but he can say the largely black, Hillary crowd was prejudiced against him. THEN he can get the white jury in Roanoke to give him a sympathy vote, so there will be a split-decision. Trump would then have an excuse to pardon him from the nefarious decision made in D.C.
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4594533/7-11-18-US-Oppo-Manafort-Motion-to-Continue.pdf
Fourth, one would have thought that if the alleged inability to prepare adequately was animating the motion herein, Manafort would have sought to adjourn both trials, here and the D.C. Case, not just seek to reverse the order of the trials (relief he sought but was denied at the time of his arraignment). Arraignment Tr., 15:25-16:5. After all, given the overlap in subject matter of the two trials, his preparation presumably would be impacted in both cases, not just one. And it is the D.C. Case that has been recently superseded to add two additional charges related to witness tampering. Manafort can hardly now complain about the order of the trials: he was on notice from the Honorable Amy Berman Jackson, when he elected last winter not to have the proposed tax and bank fraud charges all brought in the D.C. Case, that his decision would likely result in his going to trial in Virginia first. D.C. Case Status Hr’g Tr. (Jan. 16, 2018). That other reasons may account for this application is strongly suggested by a prison call in which Manafort discusses going to trial first in the D.C. Case and contends to the listener (who did not believe the D.C. venue wasfavorable) that the listener should “think about how it’ll play elsewhere....There is a strategy to it, even in failure, but there’s a hope in it.” Phone Call of Manafort (June 20, 2018), at 4:02-4:39.
= new reply since forum marked as read
