The fraud case against President Trump\u2019s former campaign chairman is highly complex. But prosecutors are sending a simple message to jurors: \u201cManafort lied.\u201d<\/b>
\nPaul Manafort allegedly laundered millions of dollars through a complex network of offshore shell companies and hid more than $60 million in foreign bank accounts to conceal his income from the IRS. But the government\u2019s pitch to jurors on Tuesday, during the first day of his trial, boiled down to a simple, even relatable offense: Manafort is a \u201cshrewd\u201d liar who wouldn\u2019t pay his taxes.
The prosecution\u2019s opening statement began Tuesday afternoon after a surprisingly quick jury-selection process that lasted mere hours. Assistant U. S. Attorney Uzo Asonye outlined the government\u2019s case, before Manafort\u2019s lawyers made their own. \u201cPaul Manafort lied,\u201d Asonye said. \u201cThe evidence will show that Paul Manafort placed himself and his money over the law.\u201d
The Manafort case is a convoluted one, involving a web of foreign bank accounts and a presidential election tainted by Russian interference. But the prosecution, as I reported yesterday, is keeping the focus on Manafort\u2019s cut-and-dry financial record, while deploying an argument that seems designed to make their case more digestible.
Characterizing Manafort \u201cas a liar who doesn\u2019t pay his taxes is good trial work,\u201d the former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti told me in an interview. \u201cYou have to make the issue simple for jurors to understand. Fraud is a complex concept. So prosecutors explain it as lying to get money.\u201d
This is so much bigger than Paul Manafort
The former federal prosecutor Dan Goldman called it a \u201cpretty standard opening statement,\u201d one that \u201cdistill[ed] complicated transactions to a simple concept of lying and thinking the law that everyone can identify with doesn\u2019t apply to him.\u201d
Manafort and his longtime business partner Rick Gates were indicted in October 2017 on charges including conspiracy to launder money and failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Gates struck a deal with Mueller earlier this year and is now cooperating with investigators; he is expected to testify against Manafort during the Virginia trial. But Manafort\u2014who is the only American charged by Mueller who\u2019s chosen to go to trial rather than cooperate\u2014could face the rest of his life in prison if convicted. Manafort will also stand trial in Washington, D. C., in September on charges related to his work for Ukraine. (Manafort was forced to step down from his post on the Trump campaign in August 2016 after reports surfaced that he was given millions in off-the-books payments by Ukraine\u2019s pro-Russian Party of Regions.)
Asonye zeroed in on Manafort\u2019s millions, saying the evidence would show that he did not do \u201cwhat Americans do every year\u2014pay the taxes he owed.\u201d At the same time, the prosecutor played up Manafort\u2019s personal spending, claiming that he used shell companies that were regularly replenished by Ukrainian oligarchs for his own use.
That, too, is a touchstone argument for jurors, Mariotti suggested. The government\u2019s homing in on Manafort\u2019s \u201coutlandish spending is Prosecution 101,\u201d he said. \u201cJurors hate defendants who live an opulent lifestyle due to fraud.\u201d
If court documents filed by the government in recent weeks are any indication, that opulence will be on full display. Jurors will be shown Manafort\u2019s multi-million-dollar homes, expensive cars, Major League Baseball tickets, and antique carpets, which the government will argue were the fruit of his \u201cwillful\u201d disregard for the law. \u201cAll of this was willful,\u201d Asonye said on Tuesday. \u201cPaul Manafort knew about the law.\u201d
According to Asonye, Manafort hid his money from his accountants and his bookkeeper, and failed to report $15 million in income to the IRS between 2010 and 2014. That year, Asonye said, Manafort\u2019s \u201ccash spigot\u201d and \u201cgolden goose\u201d\u2014the pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Manafort advised for more than a decade\u2014was ousted and fled to Russia. Manafort\u2019s funds dried up, and that\u2019s when he began creating cash \u201cliterally out of thin air,\u201d Asonye said.
Paul Manafort\u2019s fate is sealed
He predicted that the defense would try to undermine Gates, but reminded jurors that Gates was Manafort\u2019s deputy and confidant\u2014someone Manafort explicitly decided to associate with. The message jurors should send to Manafort at the end of the trial, Asonye concluded, is that \u201che is not above the law, that the rules apply to him.\u201d
Sure enough, Manafort\u2019s defense attorney Thomas Zehnle told jurors in his opening statement that \u201cManafort placed his trust in the wrong person\u2026 Rick Gates.\u201d Zehnle told jurors that the evidence would show that Gates, who he described as \u201cthe prosecution\u2019s star witness,\u201d had lied to prosecutors about Manafort in exchange for a plea deal. Gates, he alleged, was the one who handled \u201cincome, expenses, loans and the like\u2026 Money is coming in fast and it was a lot. Paul Manafort was trusting that Rick Gates was keeping track of it.\u201d Zehnle also argued that Manafort didn\u2019t intentionally deceive the IRS\u2014he just didn\u2019t know which forms to fill out.
Mariotti said that the defense\u2019s tactic of placing blame on a government witness is smart, though he predicts it will not work given the evidence in the case. \u201cAttacking the flipper is a classic defense strategy,\u201d Mariotti said. \u201cTheir defense is likely to fail, but they don\u2019t have much to work with. They have to offer up an alternative villain.\u201d
Tuesday offered the first glimpse the public has gotten of Manafort\u2019s defense strategy. His legal team centered most of their pretrial work around arguments that Mueller\u2019s mandate was too broad, and should not have included an examination of Manafort\u2019s work prior to joining the Trump campaign. When that strategy didn\u2019t work, they apparently threw it out the window. They\u2019re now hoping to convince the jury the prosecution\u2019s argument doesn\u2019t hold\u2014by throwing Gates under the bus.<\/p>\n

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