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 12th 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 12th, 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.