Manafort's trial: unpredictable and irrelevant

As Paul Manafort's trial gets going, I have two reminders.  Its outcome is both unpredictable and irrelevant.

Predictability comes from several factors.  Most importantly, we need a set of previous comparable observations.  In legislative elections, for example, I get a set of 435 House elections every two years, which are roughly comparable.  They vary across spending levels, candidate characteristics, district characteristics, and so forth.  Because of the breadth of data available to me, give me a set of characteristics for a House election, and I have enough past data that I can make a prediction, not simply about who will win, but about the range of vote shares, with a high degree of confidence.  One of the points I made, going back to the beginning of this pretentious, little blog, is that presidential nomination contests are just much harder to predict because we don't have as many data points.  That was part of why political science did so badly with the 2016 GOP nomination contest, hence my "Trump to Political Science: Drop Dead" series.  Trials?  They are weird.  Mostly, they don't even happen.  Most legal disputes aren't actually settled by trials anyway, and trials themselves are often idiosyncratic.  This one is particularly idiosyncratic.  The President's campaign manager is on trial for wacky tax schemes and other associated federal crimes.

Is he guilty?  Yes.  Clearly.  The evidence is overwhelming and beyond any reasonable doubt.  It is in the public domain.  He is guilty.  Period.  Does that mean he gets convicted?  No.  No, it does not.

Trials are unpredictable.  High profile trials are unpredictable.  Hell, Bob Menendez escaped conviction just recently!  You never know how these things are going to go, and in this kind of environment of partisan warfare, nobody can count on anything.  What is the probability of a Manafort conviction?  Maximum uncertainty is the mathematical implication of 50/50, so let's go with .5.  Yes, I am writing that Paul Manafort is absolutely, indisputably, obviously guilty, and the evidence is all in the public domain.  And his probability of conviction is only .5.  As I said, maximum uncertainty.

And even if he gets convicted, it won't matter.  Manafort was in that Trump Tower meeting with the Russian spy.  Paulie flips, and Trump has real problems.  He has more Russia-related dirt than Cohen, largely because he was the primary Russian mole in the campaign for a time.  The Cohen tape was salacious, but Americans obviously don't care that Trump is guilty of sexual assault, so they weren't really going to care about him setting up a shell company to pay off a Playmate after his lawyer tells him he can't just use cash to hide the whole thing.  Compared to sexual assault, that's nothing, so Cohen hasn't really threatened Trump so far.  Paulie flips on Trump to get out of federal prison?  Then Trump has bigger problems.  So, a conviction means Trump has to pardon him.  With Paulie's penchant for high livin', he does not want to spend his days and nights in Club Fed.  Manafort, unlike Cohen, seems to have stayed quiet so far, and that's how you get your corrupt pardon deal.

So, one of two things happens.  Either Manafort gets acquitted, and Mueller gets fired within days, with Trump braying that the acquittal proves that the whole investigation is a corrupt "witch hunt," or Manafort gets convicted and then pardoned.  (And then Mueller probably gets fired).  Which path do we take?  I am maximally uncertain, so call it .5 probability for either path, but neither path leads to prison for Manafort, nor any real trouble for Trump.

The only person attached to Trump who will suffer any consequences is Michael Cohen, and that's because he's trying to flip.  And doing so stupidly.  The smart way to play it would have been to cut a deal with Mueller to avoid prosecution, and do so quietly, or keep his mouth shut like a good, little mobster and wait for his pardon.

Trump?  Mueller can't touch him.  He never could.

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