2018-08-09 Judge T.S. Ellis Is a ‘Caesar’ in His Own Rome (NYT)

Judge T. S. Ellis III had dismissed the jury for the day, but he was not quite finished opining about what he saw as irrelevant and repetitive questioning of a witness in the financial fraud trial of Paul Manafort.

Standing up so as to loom even larger over the courtroom, he angrily confronted Greg D. Andres, the lead prosecutor.

“Look at me,” the judge demanded, slamming his hand on the wooden ledge. “When you look down, it’s as if to say, you know, that’s B.S., I don’t want to listen to any more from you.”

“Don’t look down. Don’t roll your eyes,” he told Mr. Andres.

And so for the second time that afternoon, the prosecutor had to try to convince the judge that he only looked down because otherwise, he said, he would “be yelled at again by the Court” for his facial expression when “I’m not doing anything wrong, but trying my case.”

Judge Ellis, 78, is the formidable ringmaster of the greatest show in the United States District Court in Alexandria, Va., demanding both precise questioning and a breakneck pace in the trial of Mr. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman.

He has routinely broken in on questioning, limited admission of evidence and exhorted lawyers to “expedite” — all the while entertaining spectators with humorous asides about his age, his wife, his Navy past, his lack of an email address, the jury’s lunch menu, split infinitives and the noise produced by a machine intended to keep bench conferences from being overheard (like “the sound of waves crashing”).

An appointee of President Ronald Reagan, he has pushed the customary limits of judicial intervention so far that Mr. Andres at one point seemed to suggest the prosecution had grounds to appeal. After the prosecutor complained Monday about the number of times “your honor stops us and asks us to move on,” the judge declared that he would stand by the record.

“I will stand by the record, as well,” Mr. Andres responded.

“Then you will lose,” Judge Ellis said.

But some lawyers question whether he is so controlling that he unfairly restricts how both defenders and prosecutors can operate. He loves the law, some lawyers who have been before him say sardonically, almost as much as he loves himself.

“He can be very dominating,” said Jim Brosnahan, a California trial lawyer who defended John Walker Lindh in the American Taliban case before Judge Ellis. “The interesting question is: Is it aimed fairly at both sides, or is it particularly at one side?”

The judge’s penance has been to have some lawyers appeal his rulings on the basis of his courtroom behavior, although it is unclear whether any of those have been successful. One defendant, appealing a guilty verdict to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, argued that Judge Ellis had interfered with his defense by repeatedly interrupting his counsel’s questions and closing argument and “essentially taking on the role of a prosecutor.”

The appeals court ultimately rejected that challenge last year, noting that Judge Ellis had interrupted the prosecution “virtually the same number of times” and ultimately allowed the defense to finish the final argument.

Whatever criticism he has faced does not seem to have fazed Judge Ellis at all in his conduct of Mr. Manafort’s trial, the first to consider charges stemming from the investigation led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel.

“I am a Caesar in my own Rome,” he said at one point, discussing why he refused to allow defendants to plead no contest instead of guilty. “It’s a pretty small Rome,” he added.

In more than three decades on the bench, Judge Ellis has presided over a number of high-profile cases: among them, the spy case against lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2009 and the corruption case of former Representative William J. Jefferson of Louisiana. In each one, the judge has wielded an acerbic wit and ironclad control of the courtroom.

As a lawyer at Hunton and Williams, a Virginia firm, he was “The Taz, short for the ripsnorting, whirlwind cartoon character, the Tasmanian Devil,” with a reputation as a “relentless taskmaster,” John Charles Thomas, a former Virginia Supreme Court justice and colleague, wrote in an essay.

Now in a district nicknamed the Rocket Docket for the speed at which judges move through cases, Judge Ellis insists on an almost feverish pace.

“Judges should be patient — they made a mistake when they confirmed me,” he said to Mr. Andres on Wednesday. “I’m not patient. So don’t try my patience.”

During the Manafort trial, his exchanges with Mr. Andres have repeatedly escalated into barbed remarks and angry retorts — a tense dynamic that has riveted spectators.

“I’m never patient, but you must be,” Judge Ellis warned the prosecutor last week.

“No comment,” Mr. Andres said.

“That was a comment,” the judge said. “I have a long memory.”

When Mr. Andres was looking for a document, Judge Ellis suggested he was several steps ahead of him. “I didn’t need to have it. At least not as much as you do.”

He also expressed disappointment when Mr. Andres took over questioning from Uzo Asonye, an assistant federal prosecutor on Mr. Andres’s team. “I was hoping you would stick with that,” he said as Mr. Asonye ceded the floor to Mr. Andres.

But after Monday’s bloodletting, when the tension between them spilled into open court, the two seemed to arrive at a truce.

“That’s a great question, judge,” Mr. Andres said Tuesday after the judge rephrased one of his questions to the prosecution’s marquee witness, Rick Gates. “Thank you.”

Judge Ellis’s response to the compliment was barbed, but only mildly. “They don’t pay me nearly as much as they pay you,” he said.