“Your sole interest is to seek the truth in the case,” the judge told jurors.
Handout/Reuters
Jury deliberations began Thursday morning in the trial of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign adviser accused of bank fraud and tax evasion. Judge T.S. Ellis III gave jurors more than an hour of instructions Wednesday evening, telling them “your sole interest is to seek the truth in the case.” The jury must come to a unanimous decision in order to convict Manafort, who faces another trial scheduled for September on charges of money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent. Ellis told jurors to ignore any Justice Department “motive or lack thereof” and to not take his comments and questions from the bench as opinions to be considered. The jury heard 10 days of testimony about the accusations against Manafort.
