Okay, everyone. I want a show of hands (too bad I can’t see everyone participating).

How many of you know that Paul Manafort was exonerated by federal investigators who investigated his financial and tax affairs eight years ago?

I doubt that more than a couple of people, if any, raised their hands.

How can the press explain away its collective failure to prominently report this quite pertinent fact for NINE MONTHS?

A friend told many months ago that he had heard that Manafort had been exonerated years ago in a Fox News segment. (See Dictionary.com for the word’s definition. It fits the circumstances.)

I’ve searched for confirmation of this online (including at Fox) on and off for months. If it’s out there, it’s very well-hidden, because I haven’t found it.

A friend informed me late Tuesday morning that Fox’s Andrew Napolitano brought this point up again, with an additional twist, on that morning’s Fox & Friends.

Here it is:

Transcript:

ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Here’s Manafort’s defense: I was investigated for all this by the government eight years ago, and I was exonerated. And I’m going to put on the stand as my first witness the young lawyer who exonerated me. You know who that young lawyer is? Rod Rosenstein. STEVE DOOCY: What? NAPOLITANO: Yes! So this is going to be quite a show if they succeed in getting Rosenstein, who now runs the Justice Department — DOOCY: So why was I innocent then and guilty now? NAPOLITANO: There you go.

You heard right. Manafort was “exonerated” by federal prosecutors led by Rod Rosenstein.

Napolitano made his points again, and more strongly, Tuesday afternoon in an interview with Fox’s Trish Regan:

Transcript:

NAPOLITANO: Paul Manafort’s lawyers are former federal prosecutors who are every bit as talented and experienced as the people on the other side of the courtroom. One of their arguments is this: Paul Manafort was investigated by the federal government, by a team of federal prosecutors and FBI agents for all this stuff eight years ago, and they exonerated him. And who was the young prosecutor that led that exoneration? Rod Rosenstein, who now runs the Justice Department. And they have threatened to call Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein as their first witness and have him give to the jury all the reasons why he declined the prosecution of these charges eight years ago.

This all reeks of substantive (though not technical) double jeopardy, despite the Mueller team surely covering its tracks on this by claiming they found details in Manafort’s finances representing “something new.” This explains the charges of bank-fraud conspiracy and money-laundering conspiracy but NO tax charges, a matter National Review’s Andrew McCarthy who along with many others appears not to know about Manafort’s years-ago exoneration, considered a “a glaring omission in the indictment” when it was handed down last year.

The fact that Mueller thinks he can succeed in prosecuting Manafort would seem to suggest that Rosenstein’s team (with what my friend tells me was the acknowledged help of the IRS after it was approached by Mueller about anything it might have on Manafort mentioned in the Fox segment he saw months ago) conducted a sloppy or incomplete investigation eight years ago. If Mueller didn’t believe that, how can he defend indicting Manafort?

The big question for the media is why the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, and so many other news outlets appear to never have reported Manafort’s years-ago exoneration. I guarantee you that most Americans are unaware of it, and that if so informed, they would be shocked and in many cases angry that they’re only learning this now.

Even if they can prove they did note Manafort’s previous exoneration in late paragraphs in a few print and online reports, the press — especially CNN and MSNBC, which we should recall spent the entire day of Manafort’s indictment exclusively covering that story — would be treating any other defendant not associated with the Trump administration in a case like this very differently. They would certainly have mentioned something as important as a defendant’s previous exoneration from time to time during the past nine months.

As for Rosenstein, Mueller appears to have tried to keep Manafort’s lawyers from calling him as a witness by NOT including tax charges in the indictment. If so, the judge in this case needs to see through the charade and force Rosenstein to testify. If that doesn’t happen, Manafort, by definition, even if he’s ultimately found not guilty, will not have received a genuinely fair trial. The jury needs to hear from Rosenstein himself why Manafort was, in effect, “innocent then.”