Manafort asks judge to bar mention of his role working for Trump

WASHINGTON — In the run-up to Paul Manafort’s trial in Washington, his attorneys will ask a federal judge Wednesday to keep jurors from being told of his role as President Trump’s campaign chairman, and about potentially incriminating statements from one of Manafort’s former attorneys.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District of Columbia set a morning hearing to weigh arguments from the defense and prosecutors about what evidence should be excluded at the trial set to open Sept. 24 in a case brought by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Manafort, 69, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he conspired from 2006 to 2017 to hide $30 million of laundered money he earned for undisclosed lobbying for a pro-Russian politician and political party in Ukraine.

Motions to exclude testimony or other evidence that either side considers prejudicial and inadmissible are argued outside the presence of jurors, with a judge deciding what can be presented at trial.

Prosecutors have argued in court filings that jurors need to know Manafort’s campaign role to understand why he allegedly lied to the government to conceal his Ukrainian lobbying work in August 2016, nearly two years after the advocacy had ended. They said Manafort was seeking to keep that past work from erupting into a campaign issue after Trump accepted the GOP nomination and turned to the fall election run.