LEGAL/PAUL MANAFORT/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump has insisted that Paul Manafort’s federal trial has nothing to do with him, and his name has made only cameo appearances during the trial. Which is why courtroom observers were startled on Thursday [8-16-18] morning to hear the presiding judge, T.S. Ellis III, ask a ‘Mr. Trump’ if he was present. And indeed he was. ‘Mr. Trump, you’re here for what?’ Ellis asked the court after he finished instructing jurors on their deliberations in Manafort’s case and as he turned his attention to the day’s other cases. Heads craned around the room. Even by the standards of Trump’s wild reality-show presidency, the president’s appearance at Manfort’s trial would be an astonishing spectacle. Perhaps he had come to personally announce that he was granting his disgraced former campaign chairman a pardon? Or might one of his sons, including the publicly combative Donald Trump Jr., be making a theatrical cameo to defend his father from special counsel Robert Mueller’s ‘witch hunt’? A Mr. Trump was in fact present. It was not the commander in chief, however, but one James Trump (no relation), an assistant U.S. attorney there for a supervised release hearing in an unrelated case.”
–Darren Samuelsohn, Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, “‘Mr. Trump’ makes surprise appearance at Manafort trial,” Politico, August 16, 2018 11:30 am