Holdout blocked guilty verdicts on 10 charges
Juror details how mistrial was forced on half of counts
Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, would have been convicted on all 18 charges of financial fraud but for one holdout juror, who forced a mistrial on 10 counts, another member of the jury said Wednesday.
That juror, Paula Duncan, who described herself as a strong supporter of Trump, said on Fox News that even though she believed the prosecutors had targeted Manafort in hopes of gaining information against Trump, the evidence against him “was overwhelming.”
“I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty,” Duncan said, “but he was.”
Manafort, 69, was convicted Tuesday of five charges of tax fraud, two charges of bank fraud and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account.
Duncan said 10 members of the jury were solidly convinced of his guilt on the other 10 counts as well. An 11th juror wavered at points but ultimately was won over after the other jurors pointed out what Duncan called an extensive paper trail.
“But the one holdout would not,” she said in an interview on “Fox News at Night with Shannon Bream.” “We laid it out in front of her again and again, and she still said she had a reasonable doubt.”
She described the four days of deliberations as heated, adding: “Crazily enough, there were even tears.”
Court documents unsealed late
“We laid it out in front of her again and again, and she still said she had a reasonable doubt.”
Juror Paula Duncan
Wednesday revealed more about tensions on the jury. As the prosecution prepared to wrap up its case, one of the jurors reported another juror to Judge T.S. Ellis of U.S. District Court for commenting on the case while the trial was still underway. The juror supposedly noted aloud that the defense was barely cross-examining some witnesses.
In the end, the judge rejected an oral motion by the defense for a mistrial, instead cautioning the jurors not to discuss the case among themselves.
Reached by phone Thursday, Duncan said she had no further comment beyond the interview. Although the judge refused to release the names of the jurors, she told Fox News that she came forward because “the public, America, needed to know” how close the Alexandria, Va., jury came to convicting Manafort on all charges.
After the jurors declared they had reached an impasse, the judge declared a mistrial on seven bank fraud counts and three counts of failure to disclose foreign bank accounts. Legal experts say Manafort is likely to face a prison term of between six and 12 years in prison for charges of which he was convicted.
Duncan’s views on the 16-day trial — the only account so far to come from the jury — could influence the strategies of both the prosecution and defense as they prepare for Manafort’s trial on related charges next month in Washington, D.C.
She repeatedly voiced skepticism about the motives of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, in seeking an indictment against Manafort.
“I think that they used Manafort to try to get the dirt on Trump or hoping that he would flip on Trump,” she said.
“The charges were legitimate, but the prosecution tried to make the case about Russian collusion right from the beginning,” she added, apparently referring to the prosecutors’ attempts to describe the pro-Russia oligarchs in Ukraine who funneled $60 million to Manafort’s foreign bank accounts. “Of course, the judge shut them down on that,” she said.
On the first day of deliberations last week, the jury sent four written questions to the judge, including “Can you please redefine reasonable doubt?” Duncan said that question was a request from the holdout juror.
“Most of us did not want that question out there,” she said. “We felt a little foolish, actually.”
She said the jury quickly agreed to disregard the testimony of Rick Gates. The president’s former deputy campaign manager and Manafort’s longtime aide, Gates testified in hopes of obtaining a lighter sentence for two felonies to which he pleaded guilty in February.
“I think he would have done anything he could to preserve himself,” Duncan said.
She described the documentary evidence against Manafort, hauled into the jury room in four cardboard boxes, as formidable.
“It was pretty easy to connect the dots,” she said. “Most of us had no problem with that.”