MANAFORT PROSECUTORS CHIDED BY JUDGE OVER LUXURY TERMINOLOGY
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort personally directed millions of dollars in international wire transfers to pay for high-end suits and more than $3 million in improvements at his various houses, witnesses testified Wednesday on the second day of his financial fraud trial.
The testimony was aimed at bolstering prosecutors’ argument that Manafort orchestrated a scheme to hide millions of dollars in income from the IRS. The accounts from witnesses also contradicted Manafort’s lawyers, who have signaled they will pin blame for any illegal conduct on his longtime deputy, Rick Gates.
The prosecution’s focus on Manafort’s personal finances — at times laid out in painstaking detail — revealed the vast amount of evidence gathered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team against the longtime political consultant. But it also tried the patience of U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, who repeatedly scolded the government’s attorneys for what he said was excessive and unnecessary information.
Ellis warned prosecutors Wednesday against using the word “oligarchs” to describe wealthy Ukrainians and admonished them for spending so much time documenting Manafort’s extravagant lifestyle.
It’s not a crime to be wealthy, he noted. And the pejorative term “oligarchs” and evidence of home renovations aren’t necessarily relevant to the charges in question, he added.
“The government doesn’t want to prosecute somebody because they wear nice clothes,” Ellis said.
Ellis even called out lawyers from both sides for rolling their eyes.
“Let’s move it along,” Ellis said repeatedly.
Trump compares Manafort treatment to Capone
President Donald Trump appeared to suggest in a tweet Wednesday that his former campaign manager Paul Manafort is being treated worse by the justice system than notorious Chicago mob boss Al Capone.
Capone is regarded by historians as the worst gangster in American history, a bootlegger during the Prohibition Era in the 1920s and 1930s. Capone was eventually convicted and jailed. Manafort has been jailed after alle-
gations of witness tampering but has not been convicted.
Still, the two have one thing in common. Manafort’s trial is on tax evasion, the same crime that finally landed “Public Enemy No. 1” in prison.
Trump tweeted, misspelling Capone’s first name of Alphonse: “Looking back on history, who was treated worse, Alfonse Capone, legendary mob boss, killer and “Public Enemy Number One,” or Paul Manafort, political operative & Reagan/Dole darling, now serving solitary confinement - although convicted of nothing? Where is the Russian Collusion?”
Capone’s digs behind bars apparently were pretty plush. The website for the Eastern State Penitentiary, now a historic site, says the prison “allowed Capone comforts not typically granted to inmates, including fine furniture, oriental rugs, oil paintings and a fancy radio.”
And when he stood trial in Chicago on the income tax charge in 1931, Capone was allowed to eat food his mother cooked for him, said Jonathan Eig, the author of “Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America’s Most Wanted Gangster.”
Things changed at Alcatraz, though, where Capone was treated like every other inmate, working in the prison laundry and shoe repair shop.