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If Paul Manafort (pictured) could pull off an acquittal in Alexandria or even a hung jury, it could fuel President Donald Trump’s view of the Mueller probe as a prolonged “witch hunt” that is more persecution than prosecution. | Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo Mulling Manafort's unusual two-trial strategy

Paul Manafort’s defense seems to be heeding Alan Dershowitz’s advice.

Manafort’s attorneys’ decision to effectively force some — but not all — of special counsel Robert Mueller’s case against him to northern Virginia baffled many lawyers, since it puts Manafort at risk of two separate trials rather than one. To some, it’s akin to choosing to play Russian Roulette with two bullets in the gun instead of one.

However, because the Alexandria-based federal court’s “rocket docket” is known for providing quick trials, there’s a possibility that Manafort could get to trial on bank and tax fraud charges in Virginia before the Sept. 17 trial date set Wednesday by Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington in the original case, now scaled back to focus on money laundering and failure to register as a foreign agent.

That means Manafort has a chance of getting his case before a northern Virginia jury first — a panel more likely to include Trump supporters who may be skeptical of Mueller’s enterprise. Such jurors are likely to be a rarity in Washington.

“There’s no question the jury pool will be better for him in Virginia,” said one attorney who declined to be named because he's representing a witness in the Mueller probe. “It’s definitely a risky gambit.”

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz landed in hot water last year when he declared in an interview that a Washington, D.C., jury “has an ethnic and racial composition that might be very unfavorable to the Trump administration.”

Some Democrats, like Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), responded by blasting Dershowitz as a racist.

However, even setting racial issues aside, it seems beyond dispute that a Virginia jury could be less friendly to Mueller and more friendly to the defense.

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While a solid majority of Virginians who live near Washington voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, the Alexandria court’s jury pool includes places like Fauquier County, which went for Trump, 59 percent to 35 percent. In Washington, voters overwhelmingly preferred Clinton, 93 percent to 4 percent.

If Manafort could pull off an acquittal in Alexandria or even a hung jury, it could fuel President Donald Trump’s view of the Mueller probe as a prolonged “witch hunt” that is more persecution than prosecution. That would seem certain to lead to calls for Mueller to abandon the D.C. case and might prompt a pardon from Trump or some action to shut down the special counsel’s office altogether.

Even if nothing so dramatic happened, a stumble for Mueller’s team in Virginia and in its first contested trial could raise pressure for prosecutors to be more flexible in negotiating a plea deal.

How viable Manafort’s strategy is could become clear soon, when Judge T.S. Ellis III — a Reagan appointee in senior status — arraigns Manafort on the Virginia charges and provides some hints of what timetable is likely for the Alexandria case.

That hearing was scheduled for Friday afternoon, but appears likely to be postponed after federal offices and courts in the Washington area closed for the day due to high wind conditions.

Through spokespeople, attorneys for the defense and prosecution declined to comment for this story. Jackson has imposed a gag order that limits public comment about the case by attorneys and the defendants.

Many lawyers warn that whatever marginal advantage Manafort’s team may see in the Virginia jury pool could be more than offset by the pro-prosecution bent of the Alexandria-based judges.

“He’s paleo,” one D.C. defense attorney said of Ellis, predicting a rough ride for Manafort’s defense. “As a general matter, they’re insanely pro-prosecution over there.”

While Manafort’s team has managed to complicate Mueller’s work by forcing him into two different courts, Mueller has also upped the ante in recent weeks. As prosecutors added the bank and tax fraud charges to the mix, they also increased in the amount of money Manafort allegedly laundered from $18 million to $30 million.

Prosecutors told Ellis in a written filing Wednesday that the increase means Manafort, 68, now faces about 16 to 19 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, if convicted, compared with about 13 to 16 years under the earlier charges.

“The major determinant of how long you go to jail for is how much money was involved,” said former federal prosecutor Patrick Cotter, now with law firm Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale.

The evidence Mueller has laid out, the nature of the charges and Manafort’s background as a high-flying lobbyist have many defense lawyers convinced that the cases are certain to result in some type of plea deal because no jury is likely to be sympathetic to him. The decision last week by Manafort’s longtime aide Rick Gates to plead guilty and cooperate with Mueller’s office only underscored the challenge facing Manafort's defense.

“This is not a triable case,” said former federal prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg, now with the law firm Arent Fox.

However, one factor that makes the Manafort case different from other white-collar cases is what some view as the possibility of a presidential pardon. That prospect limits Mueller’s leverage and increases the incentive for Manafort to keep fighting at every turn. One downside to this strategy: It’s expensive, as Manafort will be running up legal bills at a rapid clip.

Manafort does have another option that would limit Mueller’s office to a single trial: Try to move the entire case to Virginia for “convenience.” Jackson noted that prospect Wednesday, but neither side's lawyers weighed in on her comment.

In terms of sheer numbers, Manafort now faces 18 counts in Alexandria and just five in Washington. He could argue that with the bulk of the charges pending in Virginia, it’s a more logical forum for the case and that having one trial would promote “judicial economy.” Indications that the Alexandria federal court’s docket would allow a speedier trial could also bolster such an effort, since docket crowding is one factor judges typically consider.

“There’s certainly an argument for consolidation here, and I think either court would be open to transfer for the purpose of trying this whole thing once,” said one prominent defense attorney, who asked not to be named because of his firm’s connection to the case.

At the moment, though, there’s no indication that Manafort’s defense will make such a request. And whether to grant it would be at Jackson’s discretion. She and Manafort’s chief defense lawyer Downing have had a series of prickly interactions in the courtroom, suggesting she might view such a move as gamesmanship by the defense, especially since Manafort’s team had the option to agree to a consolidated trial in Washington.

“I think she will be less likely under those circumstances to agree, if that offer was on the table and they said no,” the defense attorney said.

Andres seemed to drive that point home at Wednesday's hearing, bracing for future defense complaints about the dueling trials and perhaps even the possibility of a transfer motion.

"Judge, this is by no way in any means criticism of the defense. But as you know, we anticipated some of these issues and offered the defense the opportunity to waive venue in the Eastern District [of Virginia], and they decided not to, which is obviously their right," he said.

The prosecutor also took time to reiterate, even after Jackson set the September trial date, that Mueller's team — which originally proposed a May trial date — is eager to get the case to trial quickly.

"Just for the record, the government is ready to go to trial and wants to go to trial as soon as possible," Andres said.

Some news coverage of the Virginia indictment said Mueller had little choice to split the case up because defendants facing a criminal tax evasion case have the right to be charged in their home district.

But the law on that point is nuanced. After a series of cases that prosecutors were forced to pursue in two or more places, including the Watergate special prosecutor’s case against President Nixon’s tax lawyer Frank DeMarco, Congress changed the venue provision in 1984 to apply the home-district rule only in cases in which the sole charge stemmed from filing of a false tax return.

Former federal prosecutor Laurie Levenson said that, as a result of the change three decades ago, the perception that tax cases have to proceed near a defendant's home “is not fully accurate.” In a 1987 case stemming from the savings-and-loan crisis, she won a ruling keeping an 11-defendant case in Los Angeles in that city, despite efforts to split it up.

In Manafort’s case, prosecutors’ ultimate decision to file the tax and bank fraud charges against him in Virginia seems to turn not on the special rule for locating tax cases, but on the more basic problem that prosecutors don’t have evidence that acts relating to those specific crimes took place in Washington.

“The Special Counsel’s Office proceeded before the Grand Jury in the Eastern District of Virginia because, based on our current evidence, venue for these charges does not exist in the District of Columbia,” prosecutors wrote last week in a filing formally notifying Jackson of the Virginia indictment.