Biggest news from the Manafort pretrial conference is that Judge ABJ says she is not inclined to grant his motion to change venues. That is unless he proposes Hawaii (she was kidding). If they can't seat a jury she says she'll revisit the matter.

For now she says defense attorneys failed to present a legal basis to transfer. The jury pool's supposed political leanings (DC voted more than 90% for Clinton) don't cut it at this point.

Also, ABJ will exclude most evidence related to Manafort's role in the Trump campaign, but will allow prosecutors to say he was still w/the campaign when press reports about his Ukraine work emerged that informed some of his alleged false statements in foreign agent filings.