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You are here: Home / Politics / Activist Judges! / C.R.E.A.M. Open Thread: Manafort Trial, Day Two

C.R.E.A.M. Open Thread: Manafort Trial, Day Two

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… Prosecutors have countered that the evidence about Manafort’s lifestyle is relevant because it goes toward showing how much income he was bringing in during the years in question — income that Manafort is charged with underreporting in his income tax returns.

Manafort is facing 18 counts in Virginia, including filing false income tax returns, failing to report foreign bank accounts, and bank fraud. He is separately facing charges in the US District Court for the District of Columbia; that trial is scheduled to start in September.

On Wednesday morning, the jury heard from Daniel Rabin, a political media consultant who testified that he worked with Manafort in Ukraine to produce dozens of television ads. Before Rabin took the stand, Ellis questioned how much evidence prosecutors needed to put into the record to establish that Manafort did, in fact, do a lot of work in Ukraine — that wasn’t contested, the judge said. Ellis on Tuesday also questioned the amount of evidence prosecutors were asking to put before the jury detailing the extent of Manafort’s work in Ukraine.

The jury heard from FBI Special Agent Matthew Mikuska, who was involved in the search of Manafort’s condo in Alexandria. The judge appeared agitated as Assistant US Attorney Uzo Asonye asked Mikuska to read the contents of documents that agents seized, saying the agent didn’t know anything about the substance of the documents, only that they were found in Manafort’s home.

Mikuska described Manafort’s property as a “luxury” unit, estimating it was about 2,000 square feet. Asonye highlighted a series of documents agents seized from the condo, including financial statements with the names of accounts in Cyprus that prosecutors claim Manafort controlled and failed to report to US authorities, and invoices for home renovations at properties Manafort owned in New York and Florida.

As Asonye had Mikuska describe documents that referred to Manafort’s longtime associate Rick Gates, Ellis questioned why that was necessary, since Gates was expected to testify. (Gates was originally charged with Manafort last fall, but later pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s office.) Asonye said there was a chance Gates wouldn’t testify, prompting a stir in the courtroom — much of Manafort’s defense is about blaming Gates for any financial issues, per the opening statement Tuesday from Manafort’s team.

Asonye clarified that as evidence came in, the government was evaluating all of its witnesses, not just Gates…


…As the federal judge in Alexandria oversees the trial of President Trump’s onetime campaign chairman on tax and bank fraud charges, his sharp demeanor comes as no surprise to lawyers who appear before him often.

“He has torn my head off in front of my wife multiple times,” said Kevin Mikolashek, who recently left the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria to start his own consulting firm.

With degrees from Princeton, Harvard and Oxford and 31 years on the bench, Ellis is formidably sharp. And although he might scold prosecutors for not meeting his high standards, in trials Ellis often uses his intellect to their benefit.

“It’s important for him that everyone in the courtroom knows he is the smartest person in that courtroom, and just be aware that he usually is,” defense lawyer John Zwerling says he warns lawyers who are new to the District. “So you better be on your A game.”

Ellis regularly interrupts trial testimony with his own questions and demands that certain lines of inquiry be cut short, clearing up ambiguity that defense attorneys hoped to create. More than one lawyer has tried to block him from doing so with pretrial motions or mid-case demands for a mistrial. Several have appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, arguing that Ellis’s interventions made a fair trial impossible.

The appeals court has repeatedly struck down those claims, saying Ellis’s questions were posed in the service of clarity…

In sentencing hearings, Ellis preaches a gospel of personal responsibility, giving the same speech to every guilty party, from American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh to a low-level drug dealer: “Life is making choices and living with the consequences of the choices we make.”…

Sounds like Trump’s worst nightmare, doesn’t he?

“Contributing Editor at National Review”:

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Reader Interactions

28Comments

  1. 1.

    MomSense

    Damn why does the fate of the world have to hang on a bunch of lawyers and a cranky judge?

  3. 3.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    IANAL but pretty sure we convict people (like Alphonse Capone!) for throwing around massive amounts of money they didn’t pay massive amounts taxes on. Just for starters.

  4. 4.

    Mike in NC

    Trump says he only met Manafort one time, for lunch at Trump Tower. No more than 30 minutes together (believe me)! Never had another occasion to get together.

  5. 5.

    Platonailedit

    "[Spicer's] 'The Briefing' isn't a political memoir, nor is it a work of recent history, nor a tell-all, not a tell-anything. Rather, it is a bumbling attempt to gaslight Americans into doubting what they have seen with their own eyes."

    https://t.co/IYtJ2TqUdV— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 2, 2018

  10. 10.

    Bobby Thomson

    I agree with the judge. Technically it’s relevant but it’s really a way to prejudice the jury. The flip side of this is that he’s not going to let Manafort’s lawyers put on a “try the victim” defense like George Zimmerman or an O.J. defense like Richard Scrushy.

  11. 11.

    James E Powell

    I am a lawyer, but I never did more than a handful of misdemeanor cases. So I have no clue how a filing false tax returns, etc. case is put on. Wouldn’t the subject tax returns be important to get in right away?

  12. 12.

    Jay

    For those wishing that Meuller will jump the gun in time for the Midterms,

    Looks like the Judge is gonna be giving gifts early.

  14. 14.

    Miss Bianca

    @Bobby Thomson:

    Technically it’s relevant but it’s really a way to prejudice the jury.

    And yet, a lot of people from Preznit Trump on down have compared Manfort’s case to Al Capone’s – and pointing out Capone’s lavish lifestyle was one of the ways the prosecution made its case for tax evasion. So, if one of the ways the prosecution is making the case that Manafort had a *lot* more money than he reported, is by reporting on his spending habits, then it’s relevant.

  15. 15.

    Ken

    I’ve been struck by the huge amounts spent on “imported” clothing. I’m wondering if they’ve got evidence that it was for money laundering – receive an illegal hundred thousand from source A, and “spend” it buying one suit from source A’s legit company. The suit – if they even bother to ship it – is really a $150 off-the-rack job.

  16. 16.

    burnspbesq

    @Platonailedit:

    Yup. The ‘fact’ he is a shouty but ‘sharp’ judge is not comforting at all

    Remind us again of your Federal criminal trial experience, so we can give an appropriate amount of deference to your views.

  17. 17.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Ken: The suit – if they even bother to ship it – is really a $150 off-the-rack job.

    I was trying to figure out how you launder money with fancy suits. Somebody on MSNBC was talking about forged invoices, I gather it came up in the trial, so that got me thinking about laundering again

  23. 23.

    Chetan Murthy

    @eemom: And OO is not emblematic of OO, either. He’s often quite nice. Sometimes grumpy, but often quite nice.

  24. 24.

    Amir Khalid

    @Matt McIrvin:
    I’m not so sure on that point. As more people around Trump stand trial, more and more damning evidence against him will emerge. It could get difficult for the Republican party to keep defending him. I think it’s conceivable, as a best-case scenario, that ultimately the party may have to choose between him and its own survival; and that (bear with me on this) it is not stupid enough to prefer him.

  25. 25.

    Jay

    @eemom:

    You get a bunch of Russian mob money in your offshore account,

    You go to a mob connected business and vastly overpay for tacky crap like $15,000 for an ostrich leather jacket worth $500 retail, $200 wholesale, that actually “fell off the back of the truck”.

    Remember, it’s not “his money”, he’s laundering.

  26. 26.

    jl

    ‘man up and pardon him’ That would be a pardon exactly of the kind James Madison said would be worthy of impeachment, conviction and removal. An impeachment won’t happen with GOP Congress, but I imagine a public uproar. If the trial can be wrapped up in two weeks, that is the time horizon for Trump to ‘man up’, but I read that his handlers will keep him busy with 2020 campaign rallies.

    So, I expect a tweet from Trump that a trial based on bogus Deep State paper is unfair, very unfair to Manafort. Just as unfair as what them damn feds did to poor Al Capone. But, it’s Trump so he could go berserk and pardon the crook.

  27. 27.

    hells littlest angel

    “We don’t convict people because they have a lot of money to throw around.”

    Uh, you probably could have phrased that better.

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