Manafort’s accountant, bookkeeper testify in Trump ex-campaign chair’s fraud trial
One of Paul Manafort’s accountants testified Friday that she went along with falsifying his tax records because she was afraid to confront a longtime client.
Cindy Laporta said that in 2015, Manafort’s right-hand man, Rick Gates, told her his boss couldn’t afford to pay his taxes. To ease that burden, she said, Gates instructed her to misrepresent $900,000 in income as a business loan.
Laporta, who testified after she was granted immunity, said “I very much regret” the decision to go along with a plan that she estimated saved Manafort at least $400,000 in taxes.
It was the fourth day of trial in a packed federal courtroom in Alexandria, Va., in which Manafort, President Donald Trump’s onetime campaign chairman, is fighting bank and tax fraud charges. Prosecutors allege he failed to pay taxes on millions of dollars he made from his work for a Russiafriendly Ukrainian political party, then lied about his income to get loans when the cash stopped coming in.
The testimony came the day after Manafort’s longtime bookkeeper testified against him, saying he had a seven-figure lifestyle that lasted until about 2015 when the cash ran out, the bills piled up and he and his business partner began trying to fudge numbers to secure loans.
The dry but potentially damaging testimony from the bookkeeper, Heather Washkuhn, appeared to undercut Manafort’s defense against bank and tax charges, which is that his business partner is responsible for any financial misdeeds. But Washkuhn testified that Manafort approved “every penny.”
Washkuhn also testified that she did not have any records of foreign accounts controlled by Manafort and had not been aware of such accounts. Prosecutors have introduced evidence that Manafort used foreign accounts to pay millions of dollars for clothes, cars, real estate and home remodeling.
Prosecutors allege that Manafort made $60 million between 2010 and 2014 while working for various interests in Ukraine and used foreign accounts to hide millions of dollars from the IRS.