Law & order

Yesterday I was in the midst of following a BuzzFeed reporter live-tweeting the Manafort sentencing, when I had to dash out to a doctor’s appointment. Forty minutes later I returned to work to find 12^th Street blocked at H by cop cars, and actual police-line-do-not-cross tape. Our building guard was in the space between the outer and inner doors, but when I asked her what was going on, she said she did not know.

So I hightailed it to my office and spent the next forty minutes or so alternating between U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson not buying any of the faux contrition Manafort was trying to sell her (I absolutely loved her remark about his lawyers claiming that other criminals convicted on charges stemming from the Muller investigation got shorter sentences because the other judges recognized that the charges weren’t from the core of the investigation: “It’s hard to understand why an attorney would write that.”) and the events transpiring outside my window.

Some flavor of mom-mobile had been stopped (my colleague from three floors above my office said it had started around 15 minutes earlier). By the time I commenced watching, all the doors were open and a clutch of cops were very interested in its interior.

Then I noticed that the cops were not DC, but Secret Service:

I don’t know about the bike police—does the Secret Service have bicycle cops? Also, another colleague tells me that the devices on the trunk of 0336 are license plate recognition thingies.

Whatever—they brought in a sniffer dog (sorry, no pix), who did not seem particularly interested in any part of the van.

And then I noticed there were three people (one man, two women) standing against the building across the way, with three cops. At first I thought they might be witnesses, but then I realized they were cuffed:

My colleague said that weapons had been pointed at them while this happened.

Back at the intersection, car after car approached the right turn onto 12^th, saw the lighted-up cop cars blocking and waited for the way to be opened magically for them. Because “I’m only going just there.” They were disappointed.

As Manafort got his partial just deserts, the cops uncuffed the two women. A female officer walked one of them around the van, pointing at the front bumper, and then at the sticker on the driver’s side windscreen. She also retrieved a mobile phone from the passenger side and gave it to the other woman, who made a call. When I next looked out, the two women were walking toward New York Avenue. But the guy had his jacket pocket contents emptied into an evidence bag, and he was patted down. Eventually a Secret Service van drove up, and he was transported somewhere.

Another set of cops showed up, pulled stuff out of the van, and photographed the living daylights out of everything. They also removed the rear license plate.

And then I had to go to lunch with my colleagues. By the time we got back, all the law enforcement crowd (there were more than 25 of them) had decamped, along with the mom-mobile.

According to their website, the uniformed division of the Secret Service protects the White House, the Naval Observatory (VP’s residence), the Treasury Department building and diplomatic missions here in the District They Call Columbia. And according to a WaPo story from January, “Secret Service officers, in uniform and driving marked police cars, patrol an area around the White House and can make traffic stops and intercede in other crimes.”

Huh.

Whatever this guy is charged with, he faces way more time than Manafort. He’s not an old white man who spent decades engaging in multiple frauds totaling millions.