First test of probe as Manafort trial begins
President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort went on trial yesterday in federal court in Alexandria, where prosecutors charged that his personal fortune was propped up by years of lies to tax authorities and banks.
The first trial to arise out of the investigation run by Special Counsel Robert Mueller got off to a fast start yesterday, as a six-man, six-woman jury was picked – and opening statements delivered – in less than a day.
The stakes are extremely high. For the 69-year-old Manafort, a conviction on the most serious charges could lead to an effective life prison sentence. For Mueller and his team probing Russian interference in the 2016 election, a courtroom loss could damage his credibility and amplify calls by Republicans for his investigation to be shut down. And for the president, a conviction of his former senior aide would increase the pressure on Manafort to co-operate with Mueller in a bid for leniency.
‘‘A man in this courtroom believed the law did not apply to him,’’ Assistant US Attorney Uzo Asonye told the jury. ‘‘Not tax law, not banking law.’’
The defence, in rebuttal, said that Manafort was a victim of the deceptions of his former partner, now a government witness, and that any failure to pay taxes was inadvertent.
Manafort faces 18 charges of financial fraud, as prosecutors say he failed to pay taxes on some of the millions of dollars he made working as a strategist for a political party in Ukraine, and then lied to banks to get loans when those payments stopped. Though the case grew out of the special counsel probe, the trial will not delve into issues surrounding Russian interference in the 2016 election; it is about Manafort’s money.
Manafort faces a second trial in September in federal court in Washington, D.C., on related charges that include failing to register as a foreign lobbyist.
Manafort collected more than $60 million ($NZ88m) between 2010 and 2014 from his Ukraine work, where President Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of the Kremlin, was Manafort’s ‘‘golden goose,’’ Asonye said.
When Yanukovych had to flee Ukraine for Russia in 2014, Manafort’s ‘‘cash spigot’’ was shut off, the prosecutor said, and the political strategist set out to generate money by lying to banks on loan applications. Asonye said Manafort misstated his income and hid debt to get banks to approve the loans; Manafort’s company DMP reported no profits in 2016. ‘‘He created cash out of thin air.’’
Manafort ‘‘got whatever he wanted,’’ the prosecutor said, including a $15,000 ostrich coat and a $2m house ‘‘just a stone’s throw away’’ from the courtroom where he is now on trial.
Asonye’s efforts to paint Manafort as a free-spending tax cheat were interrupted more than once by US District Court Judge T.S. Ellis, who noted ‘‘it isn’t a crime to be profligate in your spending.’’
The prosecutor said the charges boil down to ‘‘one simple issue: Paul Manafort lied.’’
Manafort’s defence lawyer Thomas Zehnle said the case was about ‘‘taxes and trust,’’ and that the real liar was not Manafort, but his former right-hand man, Rick Gates. Gates has pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the US and to lying to the FBI, and as part of his plea deal agreed to provide evidence against others, including his former colleague. –