From the article
Legal experts and former Justice Department prosecutors immediately raised questions about Ellis's comments.
"The operative question here is whether Manafort committed the crimes he's accused of and whether Mueller had the authority to charge them," said Jeffrey Cramer, a longtime former federal prosecutor who spent 12 years at the Justice Department. "Whether prosecutors brought the case to flip Manafort is entirely irrelevant."
Cramer added, moreover, that it's "hardly shocking" when prosecutors charge defendants to gain their cooperation against bigger fish.
"This is happening in every court room across the country right now, in cases ranging from drug conspiracies to fraud to organized crime," he said. "And appropriately so, otherwise those who make the big decisions get away with it, while lower-level people serve time in jail."
Alex Whiting, a former federal prosecutor from Boston and Washington, DC, said as much.
"It is well-established that it is beyond a judge's authority to inquire into, or second-guess, a prosecutor's exercise of charging discretion unless there is some evidence that the prosecutor based the decision on improper factors," Whiting said.
Echoing Cramer's view that prosecutors build cases all the time against powerful figures by prosecuting lower-level actors who then cooperate, Whiting said "most people would agree that's what we want prosecutors to do: focus their work on higher-level criminal actors."
He added that he does not expect Ellis to use Mueller's motivation in bringing charges as the basis of any decision he makes, but that if he does, "he will be reversed."
The judges comments were very inappropriate and seemed to be just throwing-out a little cover for Trump