Now some of you are watching the story about apparently CNN and some other outlets, Politico, I forget which others, might be Washington Post, might be New York Times, the way they've colluded to try to get the judge in the Manafort case to allow them to have the names and addresses of the jurors. Now I didn't know a lot about the topic of jury privacy, but apparently in normal regular cases the juries are not anonymous. But there are cases such as a RICO case or something high-level where a juror could get killed or influenced. In those cases, apparently I think it's the judge's decision, they can keep it private.

Now in this particular case, the Manafort trial, I feel like privacy is really important for these jurors. And it seems to me that what the press is lining up to find out is, you know, fact-check me on this, but doesn't the fact that the press is trying to figure out who these jurors are suggest to you that the press expects it's not going to be a guilty verdict? Because let me ask you this. If the jurors all voted guilty, let's say on every count, would the press have any compelling reason to talk to them? Well maybe to fill a little time, but it wouldn't be terribly important because if it was guilty they would be unanimous and there's not much point in talking to people who are unanimous because we saw the same information they saw, you know, essentially. So there's not much to ask.

So it feels like the press is expecting a hung jury at least on some counts. There are 18 counts. I don't know if they'll all be hung. But don't you think that the press also expects that the potential reason for the hung jury might be political? In other words there might be a Trump supporter or two on the jury who just isn't willing to let the government do what it wants to do with their president. You know, it might be that there's some mole on the jury who is just trying to fight the deep state and just won't vote guilty no matter what.

Now let's get to the question of revealing the identities of jurors. My prediction is that Judge Ellis will not allow the press to have the names and addresses. So I think it's probably a lot of worry about nothing. Everything that we've seen about this judge would suggest that he is smart. Has he ruled already? Oh, he said no already, did he? Okay. I saw a report that he said it was a bad idea but I didn't know if that was the final ruling. Okay, so I guess it wasn't a prediction because I'm predicting something's already happened. But it didn't seem to me likely in any case.

But here's the thing. If you were on a jury and you knew that the press had asked for your identity, how would you vote on the crime? Now you're saying to yourself, well it depends on the crime. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't depend on the crime at all. If you put me on a jury and you tell me that the defendant will know who I am and be able to find me, my address, I'm voting innocent. I'm voting not guilty. I would absolutely throw a trial over the issue of my own privacy being outed, especially if I thought it was a danger. So that's my take on it.

If the judge had said yeah, go ahead, you can have the identities of the jurors, those jurors would be absolutely within their ethical and moral right to just say okay, not guilty, we're going home. Not guilty. Don't even. I don't even want to hear your arguments. And it wouldn't require all of the jurors to say not guilty. It would only take one of them to say okay, I'm done. You guys can do all the deliberating you want but I'm not going to listen to the deliberations. I'm not going to be part of it. I've already said not guilty. It's not going to change. So that would be me. They wouldn't want to have me on that jury.

And keep in mind that the reason that we have juries is to get to something that's like justice, right? Because you are human beings who use a little bit of judgment about what justice looks like in any case. And I would consider that the greater justice, the greater justice is to keep the jury from being threatened. That's a little bit higher priority. So I wouldn't even have a skosh of guilt or feeling that I was in the wrong if, you know, the jury's identities had been outed, had I just said all right, not guilty, we're done. I don't care what the defendant did. I'm absolutely uninterested at this point.

Mobsters are loving this. Yeah, now mobsters, those are cases in which the jury is not identified, so for that very reason. Now let me ask you this. If you were me and you were recognizable by sight now by everybody, but if you had, you know, a bunch of people in a jury trial, jihadist or somebody would recognize me, do you think it would be safe for me to be on a jury where there was, let's say, some kind of violence involved? Not so much. Not so much. So on the trials in which there was violence and a potentially violent defendant I have used a little bit more effort to make sure I did not serve on those.

But as I've said before, I do recommend you do jury duty. I'm very pro jury duty. Even if you can get out of it you should serve because it makes you feel part of the system and you gain an appreciation like you've never had before. You know, being on a jury is a very humbling experience because you actually can feel how dead serious the jurors are about getting it right. And that always impressed me. I've only been on two juries but I was always impressed at how dead serious the jury was about justice and getting it right and trying as hard as they could. It's a very sobering experience. It makes you like your country a lot more.