Judge delays opening statements in second Manafort trial

Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, is getting more time to prepare for his second trial even as his attorneys say they will request that the case be moved from Washington to another location because of pretrial publicity.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Tuesday that jury selection in Manafort’s trial in the District of Columbia will begin as scheduled on Sept. 17, but opening statements will be delayed until the following week. The ruling came after Manafort’s attorneys argued that they needed more time to sort through the more than 1,000 pieces of evidence that special counsel Robert Mueller’s team intends to introduce at trial related to Ukrainian lobbying and political consulting work.

Manafort attorney Richard Westling also told the judge he plans to file a motion requesting the trial be moved out of Washington but said he didn’t yet know what alternate location he would propose. Manafort’s defence had unsuccessfully made a similar request in his first trial in Virginia.

Jackson said she would reserve judgment until seeing the motion. But she said the court in Washington had seen plenty of high-profile cases and had been able to select juries that were impartial through thorough questioning. She also noted that Manafort’s case had attracted national publicity, making it difficult to argue that other locations would be more suitable.

Jackson did note that jury selection may take more time because of the amount of attention given to Manafort’s case.

Jurors in the case will be required to fill out an extensive questionnaire that will probe where they get their news, whether they are politically active and whether an affiliation with the Trump campaign would affect their ability to decide Manafort’s case solely on the facts.

Jurors will not be asked how they voted in the 2016 presidential election, and on Tuesday, Jackson also struck a question asking whether jurors voted at all during that election, saying it was “invasive” and didn’t reveal anything about potential bias. The trial will come about a month after a jury in Virginia convicted Manafort on eight felony counts.