The Manafort trial: Guilty on 8 counts

The jurors' note and Judge T.S. Ellis' brief comments today suggest the jury will be back for at least another day of deliberations on Monday.  

Judge Ellis will bring the jury back in at 4:50 p.m. ET today. He will ask them what time they want to convene on Monday — 11 a.m. or 1 p.m.  (Ellis usually starts court at 1 p.m. on Mondays.)

The jury's note to Judge T.S. Ellis said jurors would like to finish their deliberations at 5 p.m. ET Friday because one of them has an event tonight. 

Paul Manafort — plus prosecutors and defense — have entered the courtroom after they were notified that the jury delivered a note to the judge.

Manafort's wife, Kathleen, has also entered the courtroom.  

Judge T.S. Ellis said he would make several in-court discussions he had with prosecution and defense lawyers public once the trial ends. The announcement came in his hearing of the media's requests to unseal information in the Paul Manafort trial.

But one won't be unsealed: The one that's part of an "ongoing investigation" will not be made public, he said.

What's this about: That exception happened during Rick Gates' testimony, when the former Trump campaign deputy leader was asked by Manafort's team how many times he was interviewed about his role on the Trump campaign. The special counsel's office investigating the Trump campaign and Russian government coordination said it wanted to keep that in-court discussion private because it would reveal new information about their ongoing investigation. Ellis agreed.

Gates is cooperating with the special counsel's office for Manafort's case and, apparently, on other still-unresolved potentially criminal matters.

Ellis said in court that discussion wouldn't be "permanently under seal, I hope," and that he couldn't say if it'd be unsealed at the end of the trial, like the other in-court conversations.

The other bench conferences "have to do with the administration of the jury," Ellis said.

The jury in the criminal trial of Paul Manafort has delivered a note to Judge T.S. Ellis.

The note hasn't been read in court yet. 

Some background: The jury also delivered a note to the judge on Thursday. They asked four questions about the case. They were...

We'll update here as soon as we know more.

Terry Farrar, the wife of the former US Ambassador to Panama, has been attending the Paul Manafort trial since it started 14 days ago (barring a few days she was called for grandma duty by one of her four grandchildren).

Farrar said this is her first trial — which is easy for her to attend since she lives across the street. While in the courtroom, Farrar has been knitting blankets to donate to her church. 

Every time Farrar has entered the courthouse she has followed the procedure of forgoing electronics and going through security.

Today, however, something different happened. 

After the jury was sent back to resume deliberations, two US Marshals pulled Farrar out of the courtroom and into the hallway. 

"They told me I was not allowed to have my sewing materials in court with me," Farrar said. 

Farrar had brought plastic knitting needles with her to work on blankets during court. "They think it could be used as a weapon," even though she added, "they said I don't fit the profile." 

To illustrate her small size, Farrar recalled how government officials, who worked for her husband, used to use her for weightlifting practice.

"I'm less than 100 pounds," Farrar said, "they used to use me as a weight." 

The US Marshals ushered her downstairs to run her bag through the courthouse security checkpoint again, and put her bag through the x-ray machine. 

"They said they didn't understand how it had gotten through," Farrar said.

Her materials have been confiscated (security is holding the knitting needles for her downstairs), but Farrar said she is determined to keep sewing. She plans to use her fingers to crochet.

Farrar has used her blanket making as a marker for how long the trial has gone on.

"I call it a 'four blanket trial,' hopefully it won't be a five blanket trial," she said. 

The judge presiding over the trial of Paul Manafort said he's received "threats" and is not willing to disclose jurors' names and addresses requested by media outlets.

"I don't feel right if I release their names," Judge T.S. Ellis said.

Ellis did not disclose details about the threats in a hearing Friday. But he said it was enough to make him wary of making the 12 jurors and four alternates' names public. The jury has not yet reached a verdict and is currently deliberating for the second day.

"I had no idea myself this case would arouse such public interest. I still am surprised," Ellis said.

He added that the US Marshals Service follows him everywhere, even to his hotel — which he presumably stays in when court is in session because he lives outside of Northern Virginia. The jurors don't have that protection, and Ellis even keeps secret the name of his hotel, he said. 

He also noted that making the jurors' names public in such a high-profile case could chill future potential jurors in similarly watched cases from wanting to serve.

The media attorney, Matthew Kelley from the law firm Ballard Spahr, argued that the appeals court governing the area says juror names should be made public except in special circumstances.

Paul Manafort, his defense team and prosecutors are in the courtroom for the 2 p.m. ET hearing on motions brought by CNN and other media to unseal some sealed parts of the trial, as well as the names of jurors. 

The judge had asked the team, including Manafort, to attend.

President Trump on Friday characterized the trial that is ongoing against his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort as "very sad."  

But asked if he would pardon Manafort, Trump answered, "I don't talk about that."

He went on to criticize the trial, in which Manafort is facing multiple charges, including bank fraud.