The following commentary by Gene Lyons was posted on the National Memo website August 21, 2018:
How much power it will retain after November remains in doubt, but the Republican Party as historically understood is vanishing before our eyes. What remains is the Party of Trump, an authoritarian cult of personality.
As I write, the President of the United States has been engaged in a barefaced effort at jury-tampering in a trial directly affecting his personal interest. While a jury deliberated eighteen counts of tax evasion and bank fraud against former campaign manager Paul Manafort, Trump daily assailed the prosecutors as “thugs” and their case as a politically-motivated fraud.
It’s been a direct attempt to obstruct justice. According to one standard definition, “A person commits the crime of jury tampering if, with intent to influence a juror’s vote, opinion, decision or other action in the case, he attempts directly or indirectly to communicate with a juror other than as part of the proceedings in the trial of the case.”