Manafort guilty of 8 fraud counts

Judge declares mistrial on 10 additional counts after jury deadlocks.

ALEXANDRIA, VA. — A jury has found former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty after a three-week trial on tax and bank fraud charges — a major if not complete victory for Special Counsel Robert Mueller as he continues to investigate the president’s associates.

The jury convicted Manafort on eight of the 18 counts against him. The jury said it was deadlocked on the other 10. U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis declared a mistrial on those other charges.

Manafort was convicted on five counts of filing false tax returns, one count of not filing a required IRS form and two bank fraud counts.

President Donald Trump reacted to the verdict by denouncing Mueller’s investigation.

“It doesn’t involve me ... it’s

a very sad thing,” the pres- ident said after arriving in West Virginia for a polit- ical rally, adding that the Manafort case “has nothing to do with” Russian interfer- ence in the 2016 election.

“I feel very badly for Paul Manafort,” Trump said. “Again, he worked for Bob Dole, he worked for Ronald Reagan. He worked for many people. And this is the way it ends up.”

Manafort’s guilty verdict may strengthen Mueller’s hand as he continues to investigate any possible conspiracy and seeks an interview with the president; an acquittal could have led to a broader effort by conservatives to shut down the probe.

The 18 charges in the Manafort trial centered on Manafort’s personal finances and had little to do with the special counsel’s mandate of probing Russian interfer- ence in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates conspired with those efforts. But the trial was the first to emerge from Mueller’s probe, and as such it marked a significant public test of his work.

The jury deliberated for four days before announc- ing its verdict.

Prosecutors, in turn, told the jury that the most com- pelling evidence in the case were the dozens of docu- ments, many of them emails, showing Manafort oversaw the false statements to the IRS and banks.

Manafort, 69, called no witnesses at all, as his lawyer argued prosecutors had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended to defraud the government or banks. Manafort’s lawyers repeatedly suggested their client might not have known the law.

The trial featured heated arguments at times — not between the government and defense lawyers, but between Ellis and prosecutors. The judge repeatedly chided prosecutors in front of the jury, though at the end of the trial he urged the panel not to consider during deliberations any opinions he may have expressed.

Manafort faces a second trial in September in Washington, D.C., on charges that he failed to register as a lobbyist for the Ukraine government and conspired to tamper with witnesses in that case.

Manafort has been in jail since June as a result of the witness tampering charges.

Paul Manafort