Who needs a defense when you can get a pardon?

Amazing.

Paul Manafort’s defense rested Tuesday without calling any witnesses — including Manafort himself — a decision that will send the tax- and bank-fraud trial into its final stages before jury deliberations begin shortly.

U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III rejected a last-minute bid by the defense to toss out the charges against Manafort.

  Politico

Perhaps the defense is going to argue in closing statements that the prosecution failed to prove its case, but that seems darned weak.  I'm guessing they're just waiting for the pardon.

Ponder for a moment that the president of the United States, on the day prosecutors representing the United States were in court making their case against Manafort, ordered the country’s top prosecutor, Jeff Sessions, to shut the whole thing down. Or that Trump went to bat for his disgraced former campaign chief, likening Manafort favorably to mob boss Al Capone and suggesting that the prosecution his own government brought against Manafort is malicious and rotten to the core. If that’s not improper interference with an ongoing law enforcement and judicial matter, I don’t know what is.

[...]

To understand how far Manafort is willing to go for Trump, look at the far more interesting court activity happening across the Potomac. In Washington, D.C., Manafort stands accused of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government, of failure to register as a foreign lobbyist, and of obstruction of justice, among other charges — and that alongside a mysterious co-defendant, Konstantin Kilimnik. Earlier this year, Mueller disclosed in court documents that this wingman possessed “ties to Russian intelligence service,” which persisted during the presidential campaign. That case is still on schedule to go to trial in September, despite Manafort’s best efforts to delay it.

[...]

For months now, he has mounted similar Hail Marys attempting to delegitimize the Mueller probe. Both Ellis and U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson have rejected separate motions to dismiss the two active cases against him. So far, all Manafort’s efforts have been for naught, as has his bid to stand trial at liberty rather than behind bars. [The] U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit affirmed Jackson’s order to revoke Manafort’s home detention over allegations that he was tampering with witnesses — a new crime that, if proved, would only add to his legal woes. So there’s little doubt he’ll sit in jail through the duration of both trials.

[...]

With Manafort hanging on by the skin of his teeth, and Mueller refusing to make it any easier for him, patience through all these trials and tribulations may just be the price he has to pay as he hopes that maybe, just maybe, President Trump will throw him a lifeline.

  Daily Intelligencer

I think it's inevitable. Not right away, but after the DC trial. He's just as indebted to the Russian mob as is Manafort. They've got to stick together.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 8/15:  Defense attorneys did in fact, in their closing statement, indicate the reason for not calling any witnesses was that "the burden of proof is on the government, and that the defense “made a decision not to put on evidence because… we believe the government has not met that burden.”