U.S. judge questions special counsel's powers in Manafort case

[whell]

Finally, some adult supervision arrives to the Mueller investigation:

“I don’t see what relationship this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis in the Eastern District of Virginia said.

At tense hearing at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, the judge said Mueller should not have “unfettered power” in his Russia probe and that the charges against Manafort did not arise from the investigation into Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.


The charges against Manafort are nothing more than an attempt to get Manafort to flip and dish on the Trump campaign.

Lawyers for Manafort asked the judge in the Virginia case to dismiss an indictment filed against him in what was their third effort to beat back criminal charges by attacking Mueller’s authority.

The judge questioned why Manafort’s case there could not be handled by the U.S. attorney’s office in Virginia, rather than the special counsel’s office.

Yup, so throw the case out or refer it (if in fact there is supportable evidence of a crime) to the appropriate bench.