Aug. 17, 2018 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
16:38
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| Yes, it's a very special evening edition of Coffee with Scott Adams. | |
| This time with nothing but an empty hand. | |
| Because who drinks coffee this time of night? | |
| I know who's drinking tea at this time of night. | |
| Hey Naval. Jack. | |
| Hey everybody. Wow, a lot of people are up at this time. | |
| I think I've been doing these too early. | |
| So I want to talk about the Manafort verdict. | |
| So the trial is ongoing in terms of the deliberations and the jury is retired for the evening and they're going to deliberate again tomorrow morning. | |
| And I wanted to see if we could get ahead of the verdict to see which way it might be going. | |
| Now, I'll tell you in advance, I can't give you certainty, but we're going to have some fun because we're going to look at the clues that are given. | |
| So here's some of the clues that we have about which way the verdict might go. | |
| So the jury asked... | |
| Well, here's the first clue. | |
| The defense didn't present a defense. | |
| They just figured they didn't have to. | |
| So usually that's interpreted as a sign of confidence that the prosecution didn't make their case. | |
| But it also might be that they're just so darn guilty That they might as well say, well, maybe we can fool at least one of these people by saying, look, they didn't prove the case, and just get somebody to believe it. | |
| So it could go the other way, I suppose. | |
| But it does feel like a confident move. | |
| And I would think the jury would probably see it that way. | |
| The jury would probably say, well, if they're so certain, if the defense is so certain, you know, maybe I missed something. | |
| So the other hint we have, yes, somebody's prompting me here, is that the jurors asked for some new information. | |
| And one of them was, can the judge help them redefine or define again reasonable doubt? | |
| Do you know who doesn't ask that question? | |
| People who don't have reasonable doubt. | |
| So on the face of it, just the fact that they're asking the question... | |
| It's a pretty good sign that at least one person has some reasonable doubt. | |
| Or they think they might have some reasonable doubt. | |
| Or they have some reason to believe that they might reasonably expect they have some reasonable doubt. | |
| So there's something like that going on. | |
| Now that doesn't mean that that person couldn't get talked out of it. | |
| Alright? But so far the hints, you know, the clues we have Suggest either an innocent verdict or something on the light side of a verdict, I guess. | |
| If they have options. | |
| I don't know if they have options. Anyway, now here's another clue. | |
| The prosecution put on the stand this partner of Manafort named Gates. | |
| Now, Gates was demonstrated to be a crook who had been stealing from Manafort for years. | |
| So obviously he didn't like Manafort. | |
| He'd been stealing from him. | |
| Or he's just such a bastard that it didn't matter anyway. | |
| And so here's the thing. | |
| If you're the jury, aren't you asking yourself, why would they put the least credible person in the world on the stand Unless, unless they didn't have a case without him. | |
| So just think about it. | |
| One of those 12 people in the jury deliberations is going to figure out that if they needed to put an obvious known liar with a long criminal record that he's confessed to, If that's necessary to hold the case together, well, that's a little reasonably dowdy, isn't it? | |
| So that's another clue, just the fact that they have to use this guy. | |
| All right, here's another clue. | |
| So some of the questions that the jury was asking about give us some insight about what was presented. | |
| And it's obvious that in order to understand what happened in the technical sense, whether it was a tax law or some other kind of law that got violated, They have to figure out things like what's a shelf company, and what did Gates do, and who owns what percentage of this company, and which company is required to file the documents, and what are in these documents, and who actually is promising what in these documents. | |
| Now, let me ask you this, and try to keep a straight face when I say this. | |
| Imagine the complexity of that case And now imagine 12 citizens, any citizens you know, do you think you can think of 12 people who could follow it? | |
| Or could just even understand, you know, the complexity of the case? | |
| I don't think so. | |
| Not in America. | |
| I mean, if you did it, say, you know, if your jury was picked from an Ivy League school, yeah, probably. | |
| Probably. If your jury happened to be all lawyers, you know, which is deeply unlikely, maybe. | |
| They might be able to understand it. | |
| Or tax accountants. | |
| But the odds of 12 people who qualified for jury duty for just being, you know, not obviously biased, the odds of all of them understanding the complexities of this thing are pretty low. | |
| Now, if you're one of those people who doesn't understand the complexity of it, and you just can't even tell if a law was violated, you just can't penetrate the details, are you going to say to yourself, well, I'm totally sure this person is guilty when I don't even understand what the hell's going on? | |
| Don't you think there's at least one person out of twelve who That just doesn't know what's going on and doesn't want to send somebody to jail for 30 years for that. | |
| But I saved my best reason for last. | |
| I'm going to say that nothing I've said so far has been persuasive to you. | |
| At least not, you know, a home run persuasive. | |
| You might be tilting my way a little bit. | |
| You might be leaning. But I don't think I've quite persuaded you yet. | |
| And now I'm going to persuade you. | |
| Imagine finding 12 people in the United States who do not have a strong opinion about President Trump. | |
| Can you? | |
| Can you imagine that? | |
| Now imagine that the defense is not completely incompetent. | |
| And let's say the defense, either knowingly or through statistical likelihood, because they're good at picking juries, made damn sure that there are three or four Trump supporters on the jury. | |
| Do you think there are no Trump supporters on that jury? | |
| And would anybody who is a Trump supporter not be aware of Prior to being sequestered, I assume at some point they had to be cut off from the news. | |
| But it seems like the story of the thing called the Deep State has been here for a long time. | |
| Could you really get 12 virginal jurors for this case? | |
| For just about anything else that you can imagine, I think you could. | |
| Even a terrible serial killer. | |
| You could have a serial killer where you could get 12 people who just really didn't give a rat's ass about crime news and just hadn't heard about it. | |
| That's possible. Even if it's headline news, there are lots of people who just don't really follow the news. | |
| But there is not one adult in this freaking country who doesn't have a strong opinion about Donald Trump and Candidate Trump and then President Trump. | |
| He just does that. | |
| So now ask yourself, that person has had a lot of time to think, that person or persons. | |
| I'm gonna say, hypothetically, three Trump supporters and a 12, just modestly three. | |
| What are the odds that at least one of them has not connected the following dots? | |
| And here are the dots. | |
| If Manafort's balls are in a vice grip, President Trump might be in trouble. | |
| Because as we've learned from Alan Dershowitz, the smartest guy in the game, sometimes the person will sing and sometimes they will compose. | |
| And could they squeeze Manafort enough that he would find something to say bad about the president? | |
| And would the juror think to themselves, you know, I might be the only thing keeping the deep state from overthrowing the president of the United States. | |
| Now, we can't read minds. | |
| We don't know, you know, maybe all 12 of those jurors are just anti-Trump. | |
| Anything's possible, right? | |
| But isn't it far more likely that even if the people were asked, hey, are you a Trump supporter, that they might have sat in that jury box and looked right at that lawyer and said, Trump supporter? | |
| I'm not really into politics. | |
| Wink, wink, wink. | |
| Ask yourself this. | |
| If you thought, let's say you're a Trump supporter, so just imagine this, and you thought to yourself that if you were on that jury, you could protect the president from what you believed was the deep state. | |
| And for this example, you don't have to have an opinion about whether there is a deep state or that's just a bunch of baloney. | |
| You just have to accept that if there are three Trump supporters on that jury, probably at least one of them thinks there's a deep state and thinks that their decision in that jury room could be the only thing that keeps that deep state from taking out their president. | |
| What would they do? | |
| Well, I don't know if you've ever served on a jury, but serving on a jury is a very special thing. | |
| If you haven't done it, it's not a good time. | |
| It's not fun. I don't recommend it for entertainment. | |
| But if you want to be a good citizen, you really have to try it. | |
| So don't use your get-out-of-jury-duty thing every time if you don't have to. | |
| You have to do a little jury duty. | |
| Even if you can get out of it, do a little. | |
| It changes you. Because here's the thing that... | |
| I've said some things about the potential jury composition. | |
| But there's one thing that's true about... | |
| I'll guarantee this is true about all 12 people. | |
| I believe all 12 people want justice. | |
| That's the one thing I'm positive about. | |
| That they all want justice. | |
| So, those are our clues. | |
| Let's see your opinions. | |
| You've heard the same clues I have. | |
| You've seen the same news that I have. | |
| I've made my case. | |
| It only takes one, you know, one juror who believes they're the difference. | |
| And your opinions? | |
| Jump right in. | |
| Say guilty or not guilty. | |
| I'm just looking for your... | |
| Agreed. | |
| I was on a jury. Have you been on jury duty? | |
| I have. Yeah, a few times. | |
| Twice? | |
| Twice, I think. | |
| All right. | |
| That's all I have for tonight. | |
| I'm going to leave it there. | |
| So, just for fun... | |
| I'm going to predict that I don't know if the jury has options about, you know, deciding the worst thing versus, you know, not so bad. | |
| But I think the jury is going to be kind to Mr. | |
| Manafort. I'll make that prediction. | |
| Now, not 100%. | |
| You know, if you look at it the other way, Why were they doing it? | |
| Why would they bring a case if they didn't think they would win it? | |
| I believe the odds of winning these cases is very high. | |
| So why would they bring a case unless they were really sure they had the goods? | |
| Well, here's the thing. | |
| Maybe they were bluffing. | |
| Maybe. They had to make the case to squeeze Manafort. | |
| And that would be the one situation where you might try to scare him into cooperating and not have a real case. | |
| Now, I don't know if anybody does that sort of thing, but I wouldn't rule it out. | |
| Alright. Yeah, hung jury seems like the likely case. | |
| Yeah, so to be clear, when I say it seems likely you'll have at least one juror who doesn't go along with the rest, that would be a hung jury. | |
| That would not be a not guilty. | |
| That would just be a hung jury. | |
| But I don't know where you can get 12 people. | |
| Where you're not going to have one person who says, screw it, I'm just going to put a, you know, put a wrench in this. |
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