Manafort fraud trial is moving swiftly
ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The government is likely to rest its tax and bank fraud case against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort by Friday, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Prosecutor Greg Andres told U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III that the government expected to call eight additional witnesses and finish presenting evidence by week’s end.
Under Ellis’ constant prodding, the trial has moved at a swift pace and is likely to be completed ahead of the initial threeweek estimate. It was not immediately clear how the long the defense planned to present its case.
In Wednesday’s testimony, Manafort’s longtime business partner Rick Gates revealed he first disclosed the existence of their consulting firm’s foreign bank accounts to the FBI in 2014, long before the pair became targets of a government fraud investigation.
Gates testified that the government was investigating the movement of money out of Ukraine by former president Viktor Yanukovych, who was Manafort’s primary client.
Gates told a federal court jury that Manafort urged him to be truthful with agents.
The business partners were not required to provide federal investigators financial records that allegedly would have revealed millions of dollars they had hidden in offshore accounts, most of it in Cyprus. Millions passed through those accounts, and the money was never disclosed to tax authorities, Gates testified this week.
This year, Gates pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI and agreed to cooperate with investigators in the case against his former partner.
Manafort faces 18 criminal counts of bank fraud and tax evasion, in part related to accusations that he failed to reveal the foreign accounts to federal tax authorities. The case does not directly deal with Manafort’s role as Donald Trump’s campaign manager.
“He (Manafort) said we did not need to disclose the foreign accounts to the accountants,” Gates said Wednesday.
Defense attorney Kevin Downing picked up where he left off Tuesday, hammering at the credibility of the government’s star witness, who acknowledged embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from Manafort during their partnership.
Downing suggested that Gates used the money to finance a series of extramarital relationships beyond a brief affair he disclosed Tuesday.