Manafort lawyer: ‘So many lies’ Gates can’t keep up with them
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — In blistering questioning, a defense lawyer accused the protege of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Man a fort of being immersed in “somany lies” he can’t remember them all, as he tried to undermine the credibility of the government’s star witness in Mr.Manafort’s fraud trial.
Defense lawyer Kevin Downing began his cross-examination of longtime Manafort deputy Rick Gates by pressing him on his own lies to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators, an extramarital affair and hundreds of thousands of dollars he admitted to embezzling from his former boss.
Mr. Downing also ventured into territory the two sides have mostly avoided: discussion of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The charges are not related to Mr. Manafort’s work with the Trump campaign.
The aggressive questioning was aimed at shifting blame from Mr. Manafort onto Mr. Gates, who pleaded guilty in Mr. Mueller’s investigation and agreed to cooperate with investigators by testifying in the financial fraud trial.
“After all the lies you’ve told and the fraud you’ve committed, you expect this jury to believe you?” Mr. Downing asked incredulously.
Mr. Gates said he did, but the defense lawyer wasn’t satisfied. He scoffed at the idea that Mr. Gates had repented for his actions, noting that prosecutors have said they won’t oppose his bid for probation and getting him to acknowledge he had not repaid the money he had taken from Mr. Manafort.
After Mr. Gates described his theft as “unauthorized transactions” instead of embezzlement, Mr. Downing prodded him to use the latter term — and Mr. Gates ultimately relented, saying, “It was embezzlement from Mr. Manafort.”
Prosecutors had braced for the tough questioning by getting Mr. Gates to come clean about his own crimes. He told jurors how he disguised millions of dollars in foreign income as loans in order to lower Mr. Manafort’s tax bill. Mr. Gates recounted how he and Mr. Manafort used more than a dozen offshore shell companies and bank accounts in Cyprus to funnel the money, all while concealing the accounts and the income from the IRS.
But the grilling got more intense, and personal, Tuesday afternoon when Mr. Downing pressed Mr. Gates about a “secret life” he said was funded by embezzlement, including an extramarital affair that Mr. Gates himself acknowledged. Mr. Gates also said he may have submitted personal expenses for reimbursement by Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee, which he helped operate.
After Mr. Gates struggled to recall precisely what he had told Mr. Mueller’s team, Mr. Downing asked if he had been confronted with “so many lies” that he can’t keep his story straight.
Mr. Downing at one point asked whether Mr. Mueller’s investigators had interviewed Mr. Gates about his role in the campaign, prompting an objection from prosecutors and a sidebar conference with U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III. The defense moved on. Both sides have agreed to limit discussion of the campaign to avoid prejudicing the jury, though they did permit testimony about the overlap of a bank loan with Mr. Manafort’s role in the Trump election effort.