When Rick Gates finally flipped on his former boss, Paul Manafort, it seemed like a coup for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team. But in its final argument before the jury on Wednesday, prosecutors did everything they could to minimize Gates’s importance to the case.
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When you wish upon a star: The government’s star witness is not their star witness, at least according to prosecutor Greg Andres. He used his closing argument to repeatedly deemphasize Gates’s importance to the case and rebut the claim that Manafort’s long-time junior partner was the prosecution’s secret weapon. “The star witness in this case is the documents,” Andrew said, arguing that the other exhibits and witness testimony were a “more than sufficient” basis to convict. For those who still had doubts, he invited the jury to corroborate Gates’s statement with testimony from other witnesses.
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A dumpster fire of crime: As he did during cross examination of Gates, Andres tried the “I’m rubber, you’re glue” approach to spreading the taint from Gates’s crimes onto Manafort. Recalling the defense’s commentary that Gates “had his hand in the cookie jar” when he embezzled from his former boss, Andres relabeled the proverbial cookie jar instead as “a huge dumpster of hidden money.” For jurors who might find Gates too repugnant to believe, Andres suggested they save some of that disgust for Manafort, who he said chose Gates as an employee because he sensed they shared an affinity for deceit.
Affairs and secret lives: Gates’s affair and the “secret life” it represented surfaced again as a flashpoint. The prosecution accused Team Manafort of trying to focus on the salacious at the expense of hard evidence. “Why did the defense concentrate on the affair and not the bank fraud charges,” Andres wondered aloud. Defense attorney Kevin Downing responded in his summary that he wasn’t trying to be “the morality police” but rather suggest a motive for Gates to defraud his boss—the need to keep his mistress in luxury.
(Don’t) eat the rich: The prosecution had a walkback of its own, too. Throughout the trial, Judge Ellis had admonished the Special Counsel’s office in front of the jury for delving into wealth-porn details about Manafort’s lavish lifestyle. “This case is not about Mr. Manafort’s wealth. It’s not a crime in this country to be wealthy,” Andres said, adding that “we’re in this court today” because Manafort broke the law.
Bound by ostrich leather: For the umpteenth time, both the prosecution and the defense signaled that Manafort’s ostrich leather jacket and the income tax-evasion charges it represents are the strongest chance the government has to convict him. Rich Westling, perhaps the Manafort team’s strongest cross examiner, led off the defense’s closing arguments with bank fraud and his first topic was the charges relating to Federal Savings Bank—a hint that those counts are where the defense thinks its case is strongest. For its part, the government led off with the income tax evasion charges, signaling its belief in where the greatest danger lies for the defendant.
Signatures: The defense barely tried to lay a glove on the evidence showing Manafort personally meeting with luxury vendors and emailing lawyers in Cyprus telling them to wire allegedly undeclared income from his accounts. Instead, they tried to argue around it by saying someone (i.e. Gates) could’ve forged Manafort’s signature on the foreign bank accounts. Since the defense didn’t call any witnesses, we didn’t get to hear from a handwriting expert who could try to sketch out their phoney signature argument further. Instead, the only evidence that jury heard to buttress the forgery claims was Westling asking an FBI forensic account with no handwriting expertise whether two signatures looked off to her.
The fraud fairy: The prosecution’s prebuttal to the signature arguments was simple: use your common sense, jurors. Andres asked the jury whether it makes sense that Gates would’ve exercised secret control over Manafort’s foreign bank accounts just to make his boss—and only his boss—richer through hidden income and luxury goods. “Does that make sense at all?” he wondered aloud. “We should all be so lucky.”
Parting shot: Downing and Westling earned the wrath of the prosecution by sneaking in a subject which they’d previously been barred from discussing in front of the jury: audits. It’s the defense’s position that the absence of an audit before prosecution is evidence of bad faith on the part of the prosecution. Despite getting shot down earlier in the trial, Westling raised the audit issue in his closing argument and earned a belated objection from Andres and a promise from Judge Ellis to tell the jury that the government is under no obligation to audit defendants accused of tax charges before they prosecute them.
The incompetence defense: The defense tried a curious explanation for some of the government’s charges: the alleged crimes were so obvious and so easy to find that only an idiot would try them. Referring to a 2016 profits and loss statement from Manafort’s company submitted to the Banc of California, Westling asked “how could a bank possibly rely on” a ledger whose math literally did not add up.
Defense team: Manafort’s all-star defense team is comprised of former prosecutors now working in white-collar defense. That kind of team doesn’t come cheap, but after two-and-a-half weeks of trial, it’s pretty clear Manafort got his money’s worth out of his lawyers. They played the bad hand their client gave them fairly well.
Allegations by the numbers: Manafort is charged with 18 counts of tax fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy related to nearly $16 million of allegedly undeclared income hidden in 31 undeclared foreign bank accounts. He’s also accused of defrauding at least three banks for over $20 million worth of loans.
TL;DR: Andres summed up the government’s narrative of the past weeks of testimony and exhibits in a handy single sentence: “Manafort lied to keep more money when he had it and he lied to get more money when he didn’t.”
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