A Black judge is on the Manafort case, and the GOP is shook
U.S. District Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson is the judge on the Paul Manafort case, and that's already making conservatives nervous.
U.S. District Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson is the judge on the Paul Manafort case, and that’s already making conservatives quite nervous.
The judge, who has a storied 30-year career, is no stranger to political drama. She presided over the 2005 case in which former president Bill Clinton’s former national security advisor Sandy Berger was accused of willfully and purposefully destroying classified documents related to 9/11 from the National Archives and even increased Berger’s fine from $10,000 to $50,000.
Then there was the 2007 case of former George W. Bush aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was convicted of lying to authorities relative to the leak of a CIA agent’s identity. That same year, Robinson refused to revoke the probation for D.C. Mayor Marion Barry after he failed to file tax returns for seven years.
However, the thing that conservatives are focused on is now Robinson’s history of dealing with national security matters on both sides of the aisle but the fact that, according to Fox News, Robinson “dismissed a lawsuit brought against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by relatives of victims of the 2012 Benghazi attack.”
The GOP is also up in arms over her ties to Democrats, with Fox News calling her “Obama-appointed” in their reporting and making reference to her donation to former president Bill Clinton’s campaign.
Conservatives are nervous, even as Manafort and Richard Gates face 12 counts of “conspiracy against the U.S., conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.”
