Alexandria, VA — Art Tiste, an impressionistic watercolor painter employed by the USA All the Way tabloid, who asked to remain anonymous, says he hopes the trial of Paul Manafort continues for “as long as possible.” Manafort's financial fraud trial is in its fourth day, and may continue “indefinitely,” says Special Prosecutor and Inquisitor General Robert Mueller who, admittedly, wants to stretch his “fifteen minutes of fame into fifteen years, at least.” Taxpayers, critics say, are being forced to pay for Mueller's latest act of “grandstanding.”
Mueller has sought, since May 2017, to pin alleged Russian “collusion” on President Donald Trump, without success, angering not only Trump, but also many Republican members of Congress and about half the American people, who are paying for Mueller's witch hunt. “There is no collusion,” the president has insisted since the start of the investigation.
But politics is not the reason Tiste wants the trial to last “forever, if possible.” He wants the case to continue because the presiding judge has forbidden cameras in the courtroom, leaving the media no option but to have Tiste paint the courtroom drama.
“Every day, I get to paint watercolors that capture the excitement and sensationalism of the trial. I get to show the prosecutors' zeal, the defense's apathy, the defendant's hubris, the judge's incompetence, and the jury's bewilderment. Each painting is a masterpiece, the sales of which, after the trial, will make me millions.”
One of Tiste's most recent paintings shows the judge, seated on high, behind an ornate bench, in a high-backed swivel chair upholstered in red satin, an American flag beside him. The judge gazes at the theatrics of a prosecutor who raises his left hand, gesturing for justice, while, for reasons known, if at all, only to himself, he holds his right hand over a computer screen. From their seats at their table, defense attorneys, seated abreast, look on, their faces expressing a range of emotions from boredom to weariness to ennui. The glazed-eyed witness stares at the prosecutor as if the latter were a bug he'd like to crush.
“My paintings capture the high drama of the courtroom better than any episode of Perry Mason or Matlock. Each will sell for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars. I've already painted ten; I hope to paint many, many more before Manafort's found guilty.”
His latest work, Wretches Hang That Jury-men May Dine, has already found a buyer, having sold for “an undisclosed amount.” Rumors indicate that President Trump may have bought the painting. “It will look good on a wall in my Mar-a-Lago Club,” the president is alleged to have told his wife, First Lady Melania, “maybe even better than a deer's head or the head of Manafort or Mueller.”
Although he hasn't yet painted The Verdict, Tiste says he has decided how he will depict it. “I'll show Manafort standing in the shadow of a noose, whether he's found guilty or not, and a statue of Lady Justice lifting her blindfold while blowing a raspberry.”
When Tiste was reminded that there is no statue of Lady Justice in the courtroom, the painter said, “No artist of any value allows truth and accuracy to stifle poetic license.”
Reportedly, Tiste is in contact with both Sotheby's Fine Arts Auctions and Christie's Auctions and private Sales concerning the sales of his paintings.
