UPDATE: Associated Press:
The jury in the fraud trial of Paul Manafort, President’s Trump former campaign chairman, has been sent home for the weekend after concluding a second day of deliberations without reaching a verdict.
Federal Judge T.S. Ellis III sent jurors home around 5 p.m. Friday. That was about a half-hour earlier than normal, at the request of a juror who had an unspecified event to attend.
Manafort jury sent home for the weekend (AP)
The Paul Manafort trial jury engaged in a second day of deliberations Friday, sending a second note to the judge mid-afternoon which gave no indication of how they may be leaning. It simply asked for a 5pm dismissal.
The jurors met for about seven hours on Thursday without reaching a verdict on 18 criminal counts with which Manafort is charged.
(...)
Manafort, 69, faces five counts of filing false tax returns, four counts of failing to disclose his offshore bank accounts and nine counts of bank fraud. If convicted on all counts, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Jurors in the trial are not sequestered but have been instructed not to watch news reports or talk to others about the matter.
If they did watch the news, they would catch President Trump speaking supportively of his former campaign chairman when asked if he might issue a pardon should the jury find Manafort guilty.
In remarks to reporters at the White House, Trump again called Mueller’s investigation, which had cast a cloud over his presidency, a “rigged witch hunt,” but sidestepped a question about whether he would issue a presidential pardon for Manafort.
“I think the whole Manafort trial is very sad, when you look at what’s going on there. I think it’s a very sad day for our country,” Trump said.
“He worked for me for a very short period of time. But you know what? He happens to be a very good person. And I think it’s very sad what they’ve done to Paul Manafort.”
(...)
Prohibitions on jurors reading about a case they are deciding are difficult to enforce in the smartphone era, said Jens David Ohlin, a professor of criminal law at Cornell University.
“We trust jurors to be on their best behavior and wall themselves off but that kind of goes against human nature,” Ohlin said.
“I think it was very ill-advised for the president to do this. He should have kept his mouth shut,” Ohlin added.
The prosecution could request a mistrial, but such a maneuver was very unlikely, Ohlin said.
WaPo:
On Friday afternoon as the jury deliberated, U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III held a hearing at which he disclosed that he had received threats and is being guarded by deputy U.S. Marshals.
“They go where I go,” he said. “I don’t even go to the hotel alone; I don’t give the name of the hotel.” The judge lives in Charlottesville but stays at a hotel on the weekdays when he works out of the Alexandria courthouse.
He made the surprising statement during a hearing at which a consortium of news organizations pressed for the release of jurors’ names, along with other documents sealed during the trial. The judge rejected that request, citing security concerns.
There have been specific threats, Ellis said, although he declined to provide details. He said he believed that if jurors’ names were exposed they would be threatened as well, and so he is declining to name them for their “peace and safety.”
In denying the request from CNN, The Associated Press, Politico, NBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and BuzzFeed News, Ellis said he has no reason to believe the jurors wouldn’t also be exposed to threats if their names were revealed.
“I had no idea this case would excite these emotions, I will tell you frankly,” he said.
Had the jurors been told at the outset of the case that their names would be revealed, Ellis said he likely would have seen some requests to be excused.
(...)
Ellis also denied the media coalition’s request for access to sealed portions of sidebar transcripts and any other records and transcripts that have been sealed that may not appear on the public docket in the case.
Ellis said a substantial amount of the bench conferences under seal will be made public at the end of the trial, but there’s one matter he said might not be revealed.
He said he put the matter under seal because he doesn’t want to interfere with any ongoing investigations.
Manafort judge says he's received threats (The Hill)
Trump defends ex-aide Manafort as jury weighs verdict (Reuters)
Trump defends Manafort as jury continues second day of deliberations (WaPo)