The prosecution brought up a $15,000 ostrich jacket. The defense attacked Rick Gates.<\/b>
\nThe first day of Paul Manafort\u2019s first trial started with a bang. Both the prosecution and the defense gave eyebrow-raising opening statements Tuesday afternoon, according to accounts from the Washington Post, Politico, CNN, and other media outlets.
As expected, the government argued that Manafort believed he was above the law \u2014 raking in tens of millions without reporting the money or paying taxes on it, and spending it lavishly. For the first time, though, Assistant US Attorney Uzo Asonye made the claim that Manafort spent $15,000 to buy \u201ca jacket made from an ostrich.\u201d
Meanwhile, the defense made clear that they think their best chance of acquittal is by attacking cooperating witness Rick Gates \u2014 Manafort\u2019s longtime right-hand man, who was charged alongside him last year but has since struck a plea deal with prosecutors. \u201cMr. Manafort placed his trust in the wrong person\u2026 Rick Gates,\u201d defense attorney Thomas Zehnle said.
And they\u2019re going further than merely blaming Gates for the crimes alleged against Manafort \u2014 they\u2019re saying that Gates embezzled millions of dollars from Manafort too. \u201cRick Gates had his hand in the cookie jar,\u201d Zehnle added, according to the Washington Post .
But while attacking Gates may be the best argument Manafort\u2019s team has, there are shortcomings to such a strategy too \u2014 the government\u2019s case relies on a plethora of documents and more than two dozen witnesses, not Gates alone.
This trial of Manafort \u2014 the first of two currently scheduled \u2014 focuses on alleged crimes related to his money. He\u2019s accused of laundering $30 million in payments from Ukraine into the US without ever paying taxes on it or disclosing his foreign accounts to the US government. He\u2019s also accused of defrauding several US banks to get a set of hefty loans, totaling more than $20 million (allegedly because he needed cash once the Ukrainian regime was toppled and the money stopped coming in).
Uzo Asonye \u2014 an assistant US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, recently assigned to work with Mueller\u2019s team on Manafort\u2019s Virginia trial \u2014 made the opening statement for the government.
He bookended it with an argument about Manafort\u2019s character. Near the beginning, Asonye said, \u201cA man in this courtroom believed the law did not apply to him. Not tax law, not banking law,\u201d according to the Post. He closed by asking the jury to send Manafort a message: \u201cto make clear he is not above the law, that the rules apply to him.\u201d
In between, Asonye ran through the specifics of the government\u2019s case, familiar from the indictment last February. For allegedly wiring $30 million to be spent in the US without declaring it or paying taxes on it, Manafort is accused of five counts of subscribing to false income tax returns and four counts of not reporting his foreign bank accounts.
The most attention-getting new detail on that front was that the luxury goods the government says Manafort bought with his offshore cash included a $15,000 coat \u201cmade from an ostrich.\u201d (The indictment alleged Manafort spent $849,000 at a men\u2019s clothing store in New York and $520,000 at a clothing store in Beverly Hills, but the ostrich detail is new.)
The second set of charges is four counts of bank fraud and five counts of bank fraud conspiracy. For those, Asonye said, Manafort defrauded US banks by lying about his company\u2019s finances; \u201che created cash out of thin air.\u201d
Manafort\u2019s main line of defense against these accusations, if the opening statement by his attorney Thomas Zehnle is any indication, is to attack Rick Gates.
Gates worked alongside Manafort on his Ukrainian business for nearly a decade, and then went over with him to join the Trump campaign in 2016.
The two were indicted together by special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s team last October \u2014 but in February, Gates struck a plea deal with Mueller in exchanged for cooperation and had most of his charges withdrawn.
Now that Gates has turned on Manafort, Manafort is returning the favor. His team is arguing in court that not only is Gates responsible for these alleged financial crimes but he also \u201cembezzled\u201d from \u201chis long time employer,\u201d according to Brandi Buchman of Courthouse News.
Furthermore, Manafort\u2019s team appears to be trying to exaggerate Gates\u2019s centrality to the government\u2019s case \u2014 according to the Huffington Post, Zehnle called Gates the \u201cfoundation of the special counsel\u2019s case.\u201d
That isn\u2019t accurate, for several reasons. First off, all these charges were brought against Manafort before Gates agreed to cooperate. Second, most of the charges are about forms that were filed or not filed with the IRS, the Treasury Department, or US banks (as part of loan applications) \u2014 that is, they\u2019re not about simple allegations from Gates. Third, the government has said it will call around 30 witnesses to testify against Manafort.
But it seems the defense believes the best chance of getting Manafort off the hook is to portray Gates as a scheming sellout, and hope the jury focuses on doubts about his forthrightness rather than the other witnesses or documents here.<\/p>\n

\n

Similarity rank: 39<\/div>\n

Sentiment rank: 0.2<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

TW posts: 37<\/div>\n

TW reposts: 40<\/div>\n

TW likes: 69<\/div>\n

TW sentiment: -3.3<\/div>\n<\/div>\n