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Paul Manafort's trial starts Tuesday, July 31

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https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/06/politics/paul-manafort-trial-public/index.html

Manafort bank fraud trial does have Trump campaign connection, Mueller's team says

Prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller intend to present evidence at the trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort that a banking executive allegedly helped Manafort obtain loans of approximately $16 million while the banker sought a role in the Trump campaign.

...

"The government intends to present evidence that although various Lender D employees identified serious issues with the defendant's loan application, the senior executive at Lender D interceded in the process and approved the loan," according to the filing from Mueller's team.

The bank executive "expressed interest in working on the Trump campaign, told (Manafort) about his interest, and eventually secured a position advising the Trump campaign," the filing said. The unnamed man "expressed an interest in serving in the administration of President Trump, but did not secure such a position."

While the senior executive is unnamed in this filing, in a previous court filing prosecutors identified Lender D as The Federal Savings Bank.

"Here, it would be difficult for the jury to understand why the loans were approved without understanding that the lender approved the loans, in spite of the identified deficiencies, because the senior executive factored in his own personal ambition," prosecutors wrote in the filing.

The bank official basically emailed Manafort because the documents that he falsified looked painfully fake and said, "Bro, you gotta make this look more real. Also, for sixteen mil, I want to get on this sweet Trump corruption wagon." And so it happened.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/29/us/politics/paul-manafort-trial.html

Paul Manafort’s Trial Starts Tuesday. Here Are the Charges and the Stakes.
Questions about Russian involvement in President Trump’s 2016 campaign are not on the docket but hang heavily over the proceedings.


Questions about Russian involvement in President Trump’s 2016 campaign are not on the docket but hang heavily over the proceedings.

Paul Manafort, the veteran Republican political operative and lobbyist who helped run President Trump’s 2016 campaign, is scheduled to go to trial on financial fraud charges starting on Tuesday in United States District Court in Alexandria, Va.

The main points to be aware of:

  • It is the first trial stemming from charges brought by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia’s interference in the campaign.

  • Prosecutors have said they do not intend to delve into questions about collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in this case, which focuses on how Mr. Manafort handled the money he earned working as a consultant in Ukraine.

  • The trial is expected to last at least three weeks, and a second trial is scheduled to follow starting in September. In that case, Mr. Manafort will face related charges in United States District Court in the District of Columbia.
The following are some of the most frequently asked questions about the trial.

What are the charges?
The 32-count indictment charged Mr. Manafort with disguising more than $30 million in overseas income by moving it through offshore accounts, lying to banks and evading taxes.

Prosecutors claim that beginning in 2006, Mr. Manafort hid millions of dollars in income that he received from the Ukrainian government and Ukrainian oligarchs to promote a pro-Russian leader, Viktor Yanukovych. When Mr. Yanukovych fled to Russia after a popular uprising in 2014, prosecutors say, the spigot of funds from Ukraine dried up. They charge that Mr. Manafort then resorted to bank fraud to maintain his lifestyle.

According to the indictment, he was helped by his right hand man, Rick Gates, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and lying to the F.B.I. Mr. Gates, who also worked for the Trump campaign, is expected to testify against Mr. Manafort.

The most serious charges against Mr. Manafort could carry sentences of up to 30 years each. He also faces charges of money laundering, violating a federal lobbying disclosure law and obstruction of justice.

How does the case fit into the Mueller inquiry?
Mr. Manafort’s supporters claim that it does not, and his legal team at one point sought to have the case thrown out on the basis that Mr. Mueller had exceeded his authority. The judge in the Virginia case, T.S. Ellis III, suggested in court that the prosecutors were simply pursuing the case as a way of pressuring Mr. Manafort to provide evidence that could implicate Mr. Trump.

Judge Ellis put it this way to prosecutors in a preliminary hearing: “You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud. You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment or whatever.”

But the judge ultimately decided that Mr. Mueller’s team had “followed the money paid by pro-Russian officials” to Mr. Manafort — a line of inquiry that fell squarely in his authority.

If Mr. Manafort is convicted, it will be harder for Mr. Trump and his supporters to claim the special counsel is waging a “witch hunt.” If he is acquitted, it would likely elicit more calls from Mr. Trump’s supporters for Mr. Mueller to wind up his work.

What’s at stake for Mr. Trump?
The charges against Mr. Manafort do not involve any allegations that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians to tip the 2016 election. Nonetheless, the question of what, if anything, Mr. Manafort might know about that looms over the trial.

Should Mr. Manafort decide to cooperate with prosecutors, Mr. Mueller’s team will probably have a wide range of questions related to his role in the Trump presidential campaign, including what he knows about the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 organized by Russian emissaries who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.

On the other hand, Mr. Gates, Mr. Manafort’s close associate, has been cooperating with Mr. Mueller’s team for months. So even if he has information of interest to Mr. Mueller and decides to make a deal, Mr. Manafort might not lead investigators into brand-new territory.

What has Mr. Trump said about it?
The president has simultaneously stood up for Mr. Manafort and tried to distance himself from him. “Wow, what a tough sentence for Paul Manafort, who has represented Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and many other top political people and campaigns,” Mr. Trump wrote in a Twitter post on the day the judge in Washington revoked his bail.

But the president also said: “He worked for me, what, for 49 days or something?” he added. “I feel badly for some people because they have gone back 12 years to find things.”

In fact, Mr. Manafort worked for the Trump campaign for a lot longer than 49 days. He spent five months with the campaign in 2016. He was hired to manage delegates to the Republican National Convention but moved up to campaign chairman after two months. Mr. Gates continued to serve as the campaign’s deputy chairman after Mr. Manafort was forced out in August 2016 amid allegations related to his Ukrainian work.

How could the trial play out?
To prove that Mr. Manafort defrauded banks, prosecutors need to show he deliberately lied about financial facts, said Nancy Gertner, a former United States District Judge and a professor at Harvard Law School.

The prosecutors have provided the outline of their case in the indictment and various filings. Prosecutors intend to show that beginning in 2006, Mr. Manafort used offshore accounts and corporate entities to illegally disguise income that he used to maintain a lavish lifestyle.

In 2012 alone, they have said, Mr. Manafort paid $3 million in cash for a Brooklyn brownstone and nearly $3 million for a Manhattan condominium and he bought a house in Arlington, Va. He also shelled out millions for antique rugs, clothing and home improvements including a waterfall pond and personal putting green, the prosecutors claim. All told, $75 million flowed through offshore accounts that he tapped, they say.

“They are going to show evidence that Mr. Manafort spent enormous amounts of money that are beyond the sensibility of most people, including me,” said Ross S. Delston, a Washington lawyer and expert witness on money-laundering cases.

Mr. Manafort’s defense team has not revealed its strategy.

Why is Mr. Manafort in jail?
The federal judge who will try the charges filed in Washington, Amy Berman Jackson, revoked Mr. Manafort’s bond and ordered him to jail in mid-June after prosecutors filed new charges saying that after his indictment, Mr. Manafort sought to influence the testimony of two witnesses.

They said that Mr. Manafort and an associate had suggested to the witnesses that he had not violated federal law requiring lobbyists representing foreign interests disclose their activities to the Justice Department.

Why are there two trials?
Prosecutors filed the tax and bank fraud charges in Virginia, where Mr. Manafort has a home, because that’s where they say those crimes occurred. The other charges, including money laundering, were lodged in Washington for the same reason.

Mr. Manafort’s lawyers could have agreed to consolidate the cases. Instead, they opted to hold the first trial in northern Virginia, where the jury pool is likely to be more conservative politically than in heavily Democratic Washington and perhaps more sympathetic to him.

Things are heating up. Considering all the crazy shenanigans his lawyers had backfire on him because he can't keep his mouth shut, I can't wait to see what happens in this trial. I've got my fingers crossed for a three-ring dumpster fire.
 
thehill.com/homenews//399293-manafort-trial-poses-first-courtroom-test-for-mueller

Manafort trial poses first courtroom test for Mueller

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's criminal trial on bank and tax fraud charges begins Tuesday, marking an initial courtroom test for special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of lawyers and investigators.

The trial promises to be an explosive affair, with Manafort facing allegations he laundered $30 million from work on behalf of pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians and then stashed money overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

It’s the first trial stemming from Mueller’s probe into possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign, but it will also be strangely separate from the Russia controversies that have shadowed President Trump since the day he took office.

Judge T.S. Ellis, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, rejected Manafort’s argument that the charges against him are outside the scope of Mueller’s mandated Russia investigation, but he also warned lawyers against referencing collusion or other related matters that could prejudice the jurors, according to The New York Times.

Ellis said in May that he thought Mueller was pursuing charges against Manafort just to build a prosecution or impeachment case against the president, CNN reported.

If prosecutors secure a conviction — even on just a few of the 18 counts against Manafort — it will be seen as a preliminary victory for an investigation that has led to the indictment of 32 people, with more potentially on the way.

Mueller is planning to call 35 witnesses. The list includes names ranging from Richard Gates, who was indicted alongside Manafort but pleaded guilty, to a Democratic operative Tad Devin, who served as Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) chief strategist when he ran for president in 2016.

Prosecutors are planning to present a trove of documentation to prove Manafort is guilty, and Ellis has agreed to grant immunity to five witnesses.

As the courtroom drama unfolds, there is likely to be plenty of speculation about whether Manafort is still in a position to strike a deal with prosecutors in exchange for information on Trump or other Trump associates.

While he’s signaled he’s not interested in a deal, legal experts say that could still change. Ellis said in March that Manafort faces the very real possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison, according to ABC News.

Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University professor of law and contributor to The Hill, said Manafort may not be able to negotiate a deal with Mueller since the former campaign chairman is the first person in the probe to be put on trial.

“Manafort is in the unfortunate position of being the matinee defendant in the Mueller investigation,” he said. “He’s the highest figure to be indicted, with the exception of Michael Flynn, but Flynn’s was a small charge of making false statements.”

“He has to bring serious deliverables to the table to reach a deal,” Turley said.

Manafort is also facing a trial in September in Washington, D.C., on separate federal charges brought by Mueller, which include conspiring to defraud the government and launder money, making false statement to federal officials, and failing to disclose he was acting as a political consultant and lobbyist for now-former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the political party Yanukovych led and the party that took over after the president fled to Russia in 2014.

Manafort so far appears to be holding out for a presidential pardon, according to Turley.

“Manafort seems to have stuck with this pardon strategy that Michael Cohen recently abandoned,” he said, referring to Trump's former personal lawyer who is under investigation by federal prosecutors in New York. “Manafort has refused to cooperate with Mueller and has refrained from attacking the president.”

But Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor who worked with Mueller in the U.S. Attorneys Office in D.C., said there might be other reasons Manafort isn't working with federal prosecutors.

“It may be he’s scared of the Russians. Look what they’ve done to others who have crossed them,” he said referring to Moscow’s poisoning of an ex-Russian spy and his daughter who were poisoned in the U.K. earlier this year.

“This isn’t spy novel fiction,” Kirschner added. “If he cooperates with the government, the Russians might go after his family.”

Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney and former deputy assistant attorney general who now works for the law firm Constantine Cannon LLP, said that while it’s unclear why Manafort hasn’t cooperated with prosecutors, he should have flipped a long time ago.

“Is he irrational, is he hoping for a pardon, does he fear the Russians more than he fears Trump? We really don’t know,” Litman said.

Trump, meanwhile, has been relentless in attacking Mueller and his investigation, calling it a “rigged witch hunt” on Twitter and repeatedly saying there’s “no collusion.”

If Manafort is acquitted that could bolster Trump's claims, according to Litman, though court watchers say escaping a guilty verdict on all charges seems unlikely.

The trial, which is expected to last three weeks, begins Tuesday with jury selection. The pool of potential jurors was narrowed last week to 43, down from the 73 who appeared in court.
 
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article...legal-his-trial-strategy-is-just-as-high-risk

Paul Manafort’s spent decades pushing the envelope of what’s legal. His trial strategy is just as high-risk.

Paul Manafort was heading to jail, and the judge had a few choice words for him about recent allegations that he’d engaged in witness tampering.

“This is not the first time we’ve had to talk about the rules, and about you skating close to the line,” Judge Amy Berman Jackson said. “All the defendant has said to me is, ‘Well, there wasn’t a clear enough order saying not to do it.’”

It was June, his jail-term was temporary, and the first of two trials still loomed like a thundercloud out in front of him. But the judge might have been talking about his entire, at times improbable, career.

Manafort made millions “skating close to the line,” advising foreign dictators and helping rewrite the rules of lobbying in Washington. But as he arrives in a Virginia courthouse Tuesday for the first of two trails against him, he’s up against a formidable opponent: Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the U.S. federal government.

Facing a case built on a lengthy paper trail and testimony from his former right-hand man, ex-colleagues, accountants, bankers, real estate agents, and FBI and IRS officials, Manafort’s refusal to seek a deal with prosecutors suggests he may be betting his final years on a pardon from President Trump, legal analysts who reviewed his case told VICE News.

“It’s a very high-risk strategy,” said Jens David Ohlin, Cornell Law Vice Dean and an expert in international criminal law. “He’ll either face a very sad ending to his entire life, or get the last laugh. His approach seems very much in keeping with his character. It’s what made him rich.”

At 69 years old, conviction in either of his two cases could easily send Manafort to jail for the rest of his life. His decision to fight the charges against him may represent the biggest gamble yet in a life spent pushing the envelope of what politics, and the law, will allow.

Pushing the envelope
Those efforts, so far, have paid Manafort huge dividends.

The son of a small-town mayor in New Britain, Connecticut, Manafort went from the Ronald Reagan administration to become a revolutionary lobbyist and political operative in the 1980s. Along the way, he dipped in to help out the presidential campaigns of Gerald Ford, Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole.

In the 1980s, Manafort launched a Washington consulting firm that brushed aside conventions by fusing together the once-separate spheres of lobbying and political consulting. It was a bold move that changed how Washington operates. By the end of the decade, he turned up to a Congressional hearing about corruption in politics to announce that “influence peddling” was pretty much his job description — in an admission seen as so brazen, it made the evening news.

“He’ll either face a very sad ending to his entire life, or get the last laugh.”

From there, Manafort went global, scoring lucrative contracts to advise some of the world’s most notorious dictators, like Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko and the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos — a group so disreputable that one DC non-profit labeled Manafort’s firm part of a “torturer’s lobby.” Again, Manafort, who according to documents released in his case headed the firm’s foreign department, was taking a big reputational risk, being paid handsomely to do so — and getting away with it.

Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign communications aide, described his longtime acquaintance Manafort as a master of pushing the envelope — with a finely-tuned sense of what the law will allow.

“Paul is an envelope expert: he knows exactly where the edge of it is,” Caputo told VICE News. “For the 35 years I’ve known Paul Manafort, he’s always seen the bright line, and has never crossed it. The question here is whether the government will be able to make the case that he has.”

The bright line
1532962285095-2018-06-15T154731Z_305745726_RC11E0651B30_RTRMADP_3_USA-TRUMP-RUSSIA-MANAFORT.jpeg

Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort arrives for arraignment on a third superseding indictment against him by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on charges of witness tampering, at U.S. District Court in Washington, U.S. June 15, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Manafort now faces two trials that rest on the question of whether he pushed his political career too far. Both stem from the decade he spent as a consultant for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

Manafort’s work engineering Yanukovych’s rise from disgrace up to the country’s highest office may represent his most improbable success so far.

When Manafort arrived in Ukraine in the mid-2000s, Yanukovych was tarred by accusations that he and his Russia-backed allies had tried to steal Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election — sparking a national revolt known as the Orange Revolution that swept his enemies to power.

“Paul is an envelope expert: he knows exactly where the edge of it is.”

“Yanukovych was ruled politically dead by late January 2005,” John Herbst, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, told VICE News. “Here was the guy who’s team had tried to steal the election, and they failed.”

Privately, even Manafort agreed Yanukovych’s political career was doomed. In a 2005 letter sent to Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, released last week in court filings, Manafort noted survey results showing 87 percent of Ukrainians didn’t want Yanukovych to ever serve as Prime Minister again.

Read: Exclusive: “Sex Huntress” says she won’t give U.S. officials secret tapes about Russian election meddling

“The ability of Yanukovych to help lead a campaign against the current administration will not only fail, but it will never gain any traction,” Manafort wrote.

Outwardly, however, Manafort appeared undaunted. Arriving on the scene, he presented himself to Herbst as the guy who’s “going to help Yanukovych win the old-fashioned way, by out-organizing the opposition,” Herbst told VICE News.

Court filings presented ahead of Manafort’s trial show how involved Manafort really was, including drafts of speeches and detailed planning memos sent by the American consultant to his Ukrainian boss.

READ: Paul Manafort, a mysterious Russian jet, and a secret meeting

By 2010, Manafort achieved a feat many had thought impossible. Yanukovych was elected president, earning Manafort a reputation in Ukraine as a bonafide political genius.

Manafort went on to help steer Ukraine’s foreign policy with the same assertiveness that had brought him to a position of power.

Oleg Voloshyn, who served as spokesman for Yanukovych’s foreign ministry, told VICE News he once got into an argument with Manafort over how to respond to a statement by a European Union ambassador that was seen as unfriendly to Ukraine.

Voloshyn favored a milder approach. Manafort wanted to take a stand.

“The EU is just trying to fuck you up,” Manafort argued, according to Voloshyn’s memory of their conversation. A weak response, Manafort said, would only signal to the EU that “you like being fucked that way.”

Read: The Hapsburg Group: Paul Manafort’s shadowy, European network, explained

In the end, Manafort won. But his work guiding Ukraine’s foreign policy has also come back to haunt him. In a separate trial to begin in September in Washington DC, he stands accused of organizing a shadowy group of former senior European politicians and DC lobbyists to pursue Ukraine’s interests in the U.S., without declaring those activities to American authorities.

The Case against Paul J. Manafort, Jr.
Manafort’s political career may be the backdrop of his trial in Virginia this week, but the charges all concern his finances.

According to the indictment, Manafort and his “right-hand man,” Rick Gates, raked in tens of millions of dollars while working for Yanukovych, which they funneled through offshore companies to fund lavish lifestyles — without paying American taxes.

“In many ways, Manafort is collateral damage from Hurricane Trump.”

“Manafort, with the assistance of Gates, laundered more than $30,000,000, income that he concealed from the United States Department of the Treasury, the Department of Justice, and others,” the indictment says. Manafort allegedly disguised the funds as “loans” from the companies he controlled.

Manafort bought homes in Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Hamptons and Virginia — which he tricked out with antique rugs, audio-video systems and over half-a-million worth of landscaping.

But in 2014, Yanukovych’s government collapsed. Manafort’s lean years set in, and he set out to find another way to raise cash, according to Mueller’s team. He allegedly turned to funding his lavish lifestyle with loans from American banks, using the properties he’d purchased in his salad days as collateral — and by filing misleading loan applications.

“Manafort and Gates fraudulently secured more than twenty million dollars in loans by falsely inflating Manafort’s and his company’s income and by failing to disclose existing debt in order to qualify for the loans,” the indictment says.

Though Manafort’s work for Trump may have little to do with the charges against him in Virginia, it's cast an undeniable shadow over the legal proceedings.

Read: The Mueller probe is hammering Trump’s allies with insane legal bills

“Even a blind person can see that the true target of the special counsel’s investigation is President Trump, not defendant,” Judge T.S. Ellis wrote in June. “Specifically, the charges against defendant are intended to induce defendant to cooperate with the special counsel by providing evidence against the President or other members of the campaign.”

Despite Manafort’s lifetime of envelope-pushing, this trial probably never would have happened if Manafort hadn’t decided, in the early days of 2016, to team up with the Trump campaign, said Paul Rosenzweig, who was senior counsel for the Ken Starr investigation into former President Bill Clinton.

“In many ways, Manafort is collateral damage from Hurricane Trump,” Rosenzweig told VICE News. “I doubt Manafort’s activities would have become the subject to this kind of scrutiny if he hadn’t joined up with Trump. He probably would have succeeded in skating underneath the radar until he died.”

But given the apparent strength of the case against Manafort, Rosenzweig said he sees two most likely reasons why Manafort hasn’t pled guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller.

“The window to make a deal and cooperate is narrowing, but it’s not yet closed.”

Manafort appears to be either banking on a pardon from Trump, Rosenzweig said — or else he hasn’t got any real evidence of collusion with Russia to trade with Mueller for his freedom.

Cornell’s Ohlin agreed.

“I’ve expected him to make a deal with prosecutors, but it seems that either he’s waiting for a pardon, or, possibly, he doesn’t have the explosive evidence Mueller wants,” Ohlin said.

If Manafort is gambling the end of his life on a pardon from the famously unpredictable President Trump, then his strategy in this case appears to represent the greatest wager yet in a life spent winning unlikely bets — pushing all of his chips to the middle of the table.

He may, however, have an ace up his sleeve: If Manafort does have truly damning evidence linking Trump to the Kremlin, he could potentially use it to bargain with Mueller even after he’s been convicted, said Ohlin.

“The window to make a deal and cooperate is narrowing, but it’s not yet closed,” he said. “You’d have to have something very compelling to offer the prosecution at that point.”
 
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/30/politics/manafort-appeal-civil-case-mueller/index.html

Manafort drops appeal of civil case against Mueller

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on Monday gave up his effort to challenge special counsel Robert Mueller in civil court.
Manafort has withdrawn his appeal of a judge's decision to throw out his civil lawsuit against Mueller, according to court filings.
"It is hereby stipulated and agreed by and between the parties that the (case) be voluntarily dismissed," the new filing said.
Manafort filed the initial lawsuit in January against Mueller, the Justice Department and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller as special counsel. A federal judge dismissed the case in April, saying that the civil proceedings were "not the appropriate vehicle" for Manafort to try to chip away at Mueller's authority.

Full article at link.
 
Anyone think he's really just scared of polonium retribution? Jail is one thing...whole family radiated is another.
 
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/06/politics/paul-manafort-trial-public/index.html



The bank official basically emailed Manafort because the documents that he falsified looked painfully fake and said, "Bro, you gotta make this look more real. Also, for sixteen mil, I want to get on this sweet Trump corruption wagon." And so it happened.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/29/us/politics/paul-manafort-trial.html



Things are heating up. Considering all the crazy shenanigans his lawyers had backfire on him because he can't keep his mouth shut, I can't wait to see what happens in this trial. I've got my fingers crossed for a three-ring dumpster fire.
Tuesday is July 31st.

#FAKENEWS
 
#freemanafort you fascist libs are on a witch hunt.
 
At first, I thought that 'but' had two t's and no comma

Swear to god
As I was typing it out, I was like this sounds like I'm talking about butt fucking Homer and I will catch shit for it. Not that there's anything wrong with that!
 
Manafort was never Trump's friend.
 
It is all the FBIs fault, they didn't warn Trump about the criminals he hired!
 
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