After months of scandal, rumor, and court filings, it’s the first day of the first trial in the Russia investigation and it began with Paul Manafort, a consulting gig in Ukraine, and a $15,000 ostrich coat. U.S. v. Manafort has officially begun. So how did the first day go?
Welcome to Rabbit Hole.
Theory of the case: The Manafort charges involve a dizzying array financial transactions and offshore front companies, but the stories put forth by both prosecutors and Manafort’s attorneys are quite simple. The feds say he and his buddy hid $30,000,000 from the tax man and lied about how they got it; Manafort’s team says the feds have the wrong guy and he’s the real victim here.
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Paul lied: Assistant U.S. Attorney Uzo Asonye simplified the case by saying it’s about “one simple issue: Paul Manafort lied.” Prosecutors say Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates made fortunes acting as unregistered lobbyists for deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych without registering with the Justice Department as required by law. As Yanukovych and his cronies stuffed the pair’s pockets with cash, the feds allege that they cut yet more corners by failing to report their income to the IRS and laundering the proceeds through a series of accounting tricks.
Rick did it: Manafort’s legal team don’t necessarily dispute that many of the financial tricks the feds discovered took place. Instead, they’re going for the classic strategy of attacking the cooperating witness. Manafort’s partner Gates has already copped a plea with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team to testify in the case and admitted to lying to the FBI and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. for his tax cheating. Manafort’s attorney, Tom Zehnle, argued that the web of financials were orchestrated by Gates, who “embezzled millions of dollars from his longtime employer. He abused his position of trust," according to Politico.
Our man in Kiev: The financial charges against Manafort are the most serious but he’s also charged with the lesser offense of failing to register as a foreign lobbyist. The Manafort trial isn’t about Russia or the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with it, but his attorneys still make the case that his lobbying work on behalf of Yanukovych was in America’s interests. According to Zehnle, the impact of Manafort’s consulting “was to bring [Ukraine] closer to western democracy”—sort of like the Peace Corps, only vastly more lucrative.
The man in the ostrich coat: Manafort’s lavish spending is central to the government’s case against him as it offers a motivation for his alleged financial dealings and paints him as a less than sympathetic or relatable defendant for jurors. Even before the case, the feds made sure to make public his many eye-watering spending habits, like the $934,350 tab he ran up for fine Persian rugs. At trial, the feds hammered the point home again by calling out that his wardrobe included a $15,000 jacket made of ostrich.
Exhibits: Prosecutors offered a slew of exhibits into evidence for the first day of the trial: a speech Manafort wrote for Yanukovych’s 2010 election night victory, talking points, messaging strategies, and voter research for the 2010 campaign. The evidence so far doesn’t tell us much more than we already know. But it does help paint Manafort as the brains behind his consulting firm’s work in Ukraine and not generally the hapless dupe victim of Gates that the defense attorneys argue.
Odd man out: Tad Devine, a former adviser to 2016 candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), was the first witness called. Devine helped Manafort’s firm in its consulting on behalf of the Yanukovych campaign and, much like today’s exhibits, his testimony seems more like basic exposition about the defendant’s business in Ukraine. (In other Devine news, CNN reported Tuesday evening that he’s one of several high profile lobbyists and operatives whose names Mueller referred earlier this year to the Southern District of New York in an inquiry into whether they failed to register as foreign agents.)
Still in jail: While Manafort is on trial, he’s still going back to jail every night after court despite a victory today across the river in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Mueller’s team had argued that Manafort’s encrypted messaging app outreach to two potential witnesses in the trial amounted to “attempting to tamper with potential witnesses” and a judge ordered him detained as he awaited trial. Judges on the court found that ruling “problematic” and disagreed. Nonetheless, the D.C. court said the original decision that Manafort was “unlikely to abide by any conditions” on bail, including not to commit new crimes, was sound and thus his detention remains fixed—at least for now.
The jury: Aside from opening arguments, the first day of Manafort’s trial also saw the empaneling of a jury. The 12 people who will decide his fate are six men and six women. The jurors, pulled from a pool of 65 potential candidates, come from Alexandria, where Donald Trump lost to Hillary Clinton roughly two-to-one in the 2016 election. If you assume that the jurors won’t be able to set aside their political biases, that spells trouble for the longtime Republican consultant and former Trump campaign chairman.
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