Especially since this first trial is about money laundering and tax evasion. It technically doesn't have anything to do with Trump.

Nobody can understand why Manafort is letting these trials go ahead, even with the realization he'll likely spend the rest of his life behind bars. Some say he's afraid of the Russians, so he'll keep quiet forever.

I think he knows that a pardon will eventually come his way, and he's just biding his time until then.

I just can't see a guy used to wearing $15K watches, and playing with $15K Karaoke machines, being content to live out his days behind bars.

The Russians have a film of the execution of Oleg Penkovsky (the only Soviet GRU officer to ever be executed), and apparently it's pretty horrific: they dressed him in a fine suit, tied him to a stretcher with baling wire, then put him up on the entry shelf of a cremator. They pushed him far enough in to burn the bottoms of his shoes off before pulling him out and propping him up against the wall facing the cremator while an honored GRU officer who had recently died was cremated. Once the honored officer's cremation was finished, they put Penkovsky into the machine and cremated him alive.

They show the movie to all new GRU officers to reinforce the need for loyalty.

They very well could have taken Manafort into a little room, played the tape for him, and told him something like, "you are the sacrificial lamb. If you don't go along, this will happen to you."

He was apparently at a pre-meeting, but not the main one with the Russian contingent.

This current trial doesn't technically have anything to do with that meeting or Russia or Trump. I'm no legal expert, so I don't know if a plea deal in this case could have been offered in exchange for information about an unrelated matter.

Maybe Gates and others have offered up enough information that it wasn't worth offering a deal to Manafort. I don't know.

He'll be screwed no matter what.

In addition, Those around him will most certainly try to stave off any stupidity like this at least until after the election in November. If they manage to maintain the House they will believe they have tacit permission to do whatever they want.

It would be after the next trial, which probably will go longer, and obviously it won't be until after the election.

that he would not pardon Manafort. That would not agree with his pardons of Arapio or D'Souza.

Just like his power with tariffs. If it is there, he will use it, because he really wants to be king.