SUMMARY: The Senate Intelligence Committee has released the fifth and final report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. It concludes that the 2016 Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia posed a grave national counterintelligence threat but offers no determination on whether the campaign deliberately worked with Russia to sway the election. Nick Schifrin joins Stephanie Sy to discuss.
SUMMARY: Former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort was sentenced Wednesday to three-and-a-half more years in prison for federal crimes related to foreign lobbying and witness tampering. After the hearing, a New York prosecutor revealed new state-level charges for Manafort, too. William Brangham, who was in the courthouse, reports, and Amna Nawaz talks to former Federal Prosecutor Jessica Roth for analysis.
SUMMARY: A federal judge in Virginia sentenced Paul Manafort to less than four years in prison for tax and bank fraud--far less than the roughly 20 years called for under federal guidelines. The sentence prompted outcry, with critics arguing Manafort’s punishment highlights disparities in our criminal justice system. Judy Woodruff talks to Kevin Sharp, a former federal judge, for an insider’s perspective.
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| Trump Nightmare |
SUMMARY: The Mueller team has released new details regarding its interactions with Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Michael Cohen. According to court filings, former Trump lawyer Cohen informed investigators about contact among Russia, the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign, while Manafort lied about four topics, including his contact with the administration. William Brangham joins Judy Woodruff.
SUMMARY: Two court filings Friday reveal new information about Michael Cohen. Judy Woodruff speaks with Jessica Roth, law professor at Yeshiva University and a former federal prosecutor, about the differences between how Mueller and the Southern District of New York characterize Cohen, Russian “synergy” with the Trump campaign and potential overlap between Trump's political and business interests.
SUMMARY: Paul Manafort is in legal hot water once again, as prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller have accused him of breaking his plea agreement and lying both to them and to the FBI “on a variety of subject matters.” What does this new accusation mean for Manafort--and for Mueller’s Russia probe? Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti joins Judy Woodruff to interpret the news.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including the guilty plea from Paul Manafort and deal to cooperate with the Mueller investigation, President Trump’s contentious remarks about Hurricane Maria, and slipping polls for the President ahead of the general election for control of the House and the Senate.
Judy Woodruff (NewsHour): As the Carolinas grapple with Florence's destructive forces, President Trump sparked a new political storm after questioning the number of Americans killed in the aftermath of Puerto Rico's storm last year.
And the general election for control of the House and Senate has officially begun, a perfect moment for the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That is syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Hello to both of you.
Mark, I'm going to start with the Paul Manafort plea. He had said for months that he wasn't going to do this, but now he has. He's pled guilty. And he's cooperating with Robert Mueller. We — it's clear there's so much we don't know, but what does this mean for the President, potentially?
Mark Shields, syndicated columnist: It means bad news.
He is the — Paul Manafort is the person closest to the President, who was in the campaign, who was involved in a meeting at Trump Tower with the Russians, who was involved intimately in the convention preparations, to changing the platform of the — in a position on Ukraine.
So there's a lot. Plus, he was the conduit, to the degree there was one, in the Trump campaign to the traditional Republican Party. So, Paul Manafort is potentially a real problem.
Judy Woodruff: David?
David Brooks, New York Times: Yes, I agree.
It's striking to me how late in the process it is that this plea deal came. Maybe Manafort was holding out. But the fact that Mueller decided to accept and cut the plea suggests there's something there, either about Trump, about a member of Trump's family, about somebody else.
It suggests that Mueller is proceeding slowly, and — but very remorselessly. And so it might not even be about Russia. It's been interesting. A lot of the indictments that have so far come down have not been about Russia. They have been other things. And there could be some other — some other law-breaking, potential law-breaking somewhere in Trump's past.
Judy Woodruff: Yes, we will certainly watch and wait.
In the meantime, as I mentioned, Mark, this is the week in which we're waiting for this hurricane to hit the East, Southern, Southeastern coast of the U.S. President Trump a surprise everyone with a tweet the other morning questioning the number of people who died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria that hit Puerto Rico.
The outside experts, completely nonpolitical, had come to the conclusion, several of them, that it was around 3,000. The President said that's not so.
It's not just Democrats, but Republicans in the state of Florida and elsewhere, who have come back and said the President's wrong.
What has he stepped into here?
Mark Shields: He stepped into, Judy, and exposed himself as somebody whose ego is so out of check, whose narcissistic impulses are so total, that he could equate a personal tragedy of enormous dimensions, of some 3,000, now some estimates are as high as 4,000-plus, deaths in Puerto Rico to being a political conspiracy against him by the part of his political enemies.
As far as Republicans in Florida, Rick Scott, the governor, not surprisingly, spoke, said, it's not true. He has been to Puerto Rico himself seven times. He's made a big effort politically and governmentally to welcome the Puerto Ricans, the diaspora who've been moved to Florida as a result of that storm, who immediately become voters in that state.
But probably most telling was Ron DeSantis, the Republican nominee for governor, the Mini-Me of this campaign, the Donald Trump clone, self-styled, self-admitted, saying that he didn't agree with the President on this, which is — I don't know what it's comfortable to. Breaking with the king?
And so it's — I would say that Trump has really, in this case, isolated himself and exposed himself.
Judy Woodruff: Any positive calculus for the President here, David?
(LAUGHTER)
David Brooks: No, hard to think of that one.
It almost makes you nostalgic to remember when he was bragging about his crowd size at the inaugural. That at least — it was a lie, but at least it was a harmless lie.
Mark Shields: That's right.
David Brooks: This is a lie where you render nearly 3,000 Americans invisible, that you don't acknowledge their existence, and you don't even see them.
And so it's essentially telling the families of the people who died and those who died and anybody who cares about their fellow citizens that you can write them out of the history books, because their deaths make Donald Trump look bad.
Mark Shields: Just one…
David Brooks: And so it's almost pathological.
Mark Shields: Go ahead. Pardon me.
I agree.
Just one other thing, Judy. The politics of disasters, natural disasters in this country, are very real. To go back to Superstorm Sandy and even the 2012 election, when Barack Obama, the President, went to New Jersey, and Republican Governor Chris Christie, who was a big supporter of Romney's, thanked him publicly for the concern and the compassion that he and his administration had showed the people of New Jersey suffering.
And on the other side, it was George W. Bush's decline as a President in popular support really was accelerated by Hurricane Katrina, his apparent indifference, his endorsement of Michael Brown, "Heck of a job, Brownie," as FEMA just absolutely failed.
And I would just say this about political — about natural disasters. There's no politics involved among people, whether it's red states or blue states, liberals or conservatives. They look to the federal government, regardless of philosophy, for help, for effective, efficient, responsive help.
And Donald Trump, when he went to Texas after the great storm last year, the first thing he said was, what a crowd. What a turnout, again making it about Donald Trump.
SUMMARY: Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has agreed to a plea deal and to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Manafort is the fourth former Trump campaign aide to admit to federal crimes as part of the Russia probe. William Brangham was in the courtroom and joins Judy Woodruff for an update.
SUMMARY: It’s been a dramatic week for President Trump and some of his former associates. New York Times columnist David Brooks and Ezra Klein from Vox join Judy Woodruff to discuss the President's legal and moral standing, emerging patterns among the circle of Trump intimates, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the rule of law, and the final episodes of 'great man' John McCain.
Judy Woodruff (NewsHour): But first to the analysis of Brooks and Klein.
That is New York Times columnist David Brooks and Ezra Klein of Vox.com. Mark Shields is away.
Hello to both of you.
It’s Friday. And I say this every week. What a week. But it really is what a week.
David, this week, we saw the President’s former campaign chairman, manager being found guilty of some very serious charges, a number of felonies. We saw the President’s personal lawyer, former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleading guilty to a number of serious crimes.
Where does this leave the President?
David Brooks, New York Times: I think hurt.
But the debate a lot of my friends are having, is this the unraveling moment? And I personally do not think it is. It may lead to the unraveling moment.
But the Manafort conviction is on matters that were scarcely related to Donald Trump. The Cohen conviction is about a campaign finance law. I mean, to me, one of the things — weird things about our culture is, the President of the United States paid off two porn stars to keep them silent from an affair, and we’re talking about campaign finance.
To me, the moral affront is so gigantic. The legal affront seems to me less. And so I don’t think that’s the kind of — whether the — whether Michael Cohen fronted him some money to pay off the hush money, that doesn’t strike me as the sort of thing that really alters a presidency.
It does open up a lot of legal avenues. And as the prosecution grants people immunity, the thing about these special prosecutors is, you don’t know where they’re going. And so they may start out with Russia collusions, they may wind up with Stormy Daniels, and then they’re off to the races.
And so, assuming Donald Trump did something else in his life, it seems to me a lot more likely they’re going to find that.
Judy Woodruff: So, Ezra, I mean, just the fact, though, that these two people who are — had such a prominent role for — working for the President in his campaign for presidency, the campaign, and then the person who was his personal — they called him fixer, lawyer, whatever you want to call it, somebody close to him, Michael Cohen.
Ezra Klein, Vox.com: Yes, it does seem like a tremendous coincidence that there was so much criminality and thuggish behavior all around Trump.
I think the thing that is important here is twofold. Number one is what we’re actually seeing is tolerated around Donald Trump. David’s right that I don’t think we know where any of this ends. And I’m not sure that the things we have found out so far are going to lead to the unraveling or lead to impeachment.
But we only know what we know. And what we also know is, there’s a huge amount we don’t know about the Donald Trump Organization, about the connections with Russia. We know that Bob Mueller knows a lot more than we know.
And so, as we see different things come out, as you see what kind of behavior was tolerated, and even encouraged, right — the Michael Cohen behavior appears to have been directed by Donald Trump within the Trump Organization — that should change our estimation of what is going on in the things we don’t know.
The second thing that I just think is interesting and telling this week is Donald Trump coming out and saying that he thinks it ought to be illegal or potentially ought to be illegal, for low-level criminals to flip on their bosses, coming out and saying that what he really hates is rats.
We have a sort of President now saying that what he doesn’t like is snitches. And people who don’t think they have a lot to hide don’t come out with principled objections to that kind of prosecutorial pressure.
Judy Woodruff: Well, I don’t know whether we’re calling them flip — people who flip or not, David, but you have got the man we have been talking about tonight, Allen Weisselberg, who’s the man with the knowledge of the money inside the Trump business organization, on top of his good friend, a man named David Pecker, who runs the company that runs The National Enquirer.
They’re both cooperating. They have been given immunity.
David Brooks: And Cohen and, before that, Omarosa.
Judy Woodruff: Right.
David Brooks: I mean, one thing we have learned about Donald Trump is that he does't inspire a lot of lifelong personal loyalty, that, if you’re working with Trump, it’s not personal, it’s business.
And he turns on people like a dime. And, as a result, people turn on him like a dime. And so you have a lot of people who are loyal for pragmatic reasons right now in the White House and in the Republican Party, but it’s not because of any affection.
And so the lesson is, if things turn, they will probably turn all at once. If it’s no longer useful to pretend you like Donald Trump, people are going to stop liking Donald Trump. And so when something — if there is something big out there — and I want to caution us, we don’t know.
Judy Woodruff: That’s true.
(CROSSTALK)
David Brooks: But if there is something big out there, you will see a turn all at once, because there’s just not a lot of love there holding people to loyalty.
Judy Woodruff: But is the President already weakened by this, Ezra, or do we just wait and watch and withhold judgment?
Ezra Klein: I mean, I do think he’s weakened. The question is weakened in what and in what way.
Long term, I think people underestimate how important Donald Trump’s drain the swamp, anti-corruption plank was to his 2016 victory. It was a very close election. And if you look at the final polls — there was a Washington Post/ABC News poll from just a couple days before the election.
The single category on which Trump led Hillary Clinton was corruption. He was tied on the economy. He was behind on immigration and national security and other things. But people believed in him to clean up Washington, or at least believed in him more than they believed in her to do that.
Donald Trump has now had multiple Cabinet secretaries resign for corruption. He’s had key people around him go to jail. He’s under constant investigation. Things around his family are very strange.
To give up that is going to be rough for the Republicans in 2018. That’s already becoming an issue for the Democrats. But, in 2020, I do think people underestimate how much more difficult it is going to be for him to run as the person who is now a paragon of Washington corruption, as opposed to its key enemy.
Judy Woodruff: Well, how do you see that, David?
David Brooks: It could be.
I mean, if you look at the polling — Ezra would know this better than me, but I saw in AP today where he was down to 38, so maybe there is some slippage.
I would just say, from my personal experience — I was with a lot of — some Trump people this week in North and South Carolina. First of all, we didn’t talk about it. We talked about politics and life in general. But these scandals were just off the radar screen.
I certainly didn’t detect anybody who was a Trump supporter not being a Trump supporter. So, as long as he has a death grip on the Republican Party, and as long as that death grip — or the loyalty is to Trump himself and not to the party, not to any position, which I think it is, he’s where he has been, with a very solid party really wrapped around his finger right now.
Judy Woodruff: But, Ezra, this does seem to be giving pause to at least some of the Republicans. They’re not abandoning him yet, but, in their language, in the way they’re talking about this, you sense a — I don’t know, a discomfort, at the very least.
Ezra Klein: I think has been — I think there’s a lot of discomfort lurking very, very close to the surface.
(LAUGHTER)
Ezra Klein: But, in general, I think this something that we always need to be careful with.
I think the media has a tendency to think about Trump’s support as this one kind of thing. And so we will go and talk to very die-hard Trump supporters and say, OK, do you still support Donald Trump? And they will say, of course I do.
Donald Trump clearly has a base of support, and it’s big. It looks to be around 30-ish percentage points in the polls. There’s a Morning Consult that — this is way too early to do, but matched Donald Trump up against every Democrat they could think of.
And what was surprising was that the support for Democrats varied a lot, from people like Joe Biden, who people knew, to Montana Governor Bullock, who they didn’t. But what didn’t change was Trump supporters, always right around 30 percent.
The key for Trump is not strong Republicans who support him. The question is that sort of 5, 10 percentage points that pushed them over the edge. That’s the people who he can’t lose. And while they’re probably not paying a huge amount of in-and-out attention — a lot of these folks might be less attached to politics than, say, the people in this room — they’re also not die-hard Trump supporters.
And if they begin to think he is part of the problem, that’s where things get very dangerous for him, because his margins have been small. And, also, the coming election is 2018. And Republicans, they don’t have his personal charisma.
SUMMARY: Another member of President Trump's team has been working with special counsel Robert Mueller, according to the New York Times. White House Counsel Don McGahn has reportedly shared detailed accounts about events at the heart of the investigation. Amna Nawaz reports, and Judy Woodruff talks with former deputy independent counsel Solomon Wisenberg, and former White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler.
SUMMARY: President Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges including campaign finance violations for paying off women at Trump's direction, bank fraud and more than $4 million in tax evasion. The deal could result in prison time. Judy Woodruff learns more from Jessica Roth of Yeshiva University Cardozo School of Law, [and] Andrea Bernstein of WNYC.
SUMMARY: A jury found President Trump's 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty on eight counts of bank and tax fraud, and failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. A mistrial was declared on 10 other counts. Judy Woodruff learns more from William Brangham and Jessica Roth of Yeshiva University Cardozo School of Law.
SUMMARY: Fallout continued today after a guilty plea and a guilty verdict for two men with close ties to President Trump in federal court on a combined 16 counts, ranging from tax fraud to campaign finance violations. Yamiche Alcindor, Lisa Desjardins, and Larry Noble a campaign finance expert and former general counsel for the Federal Election Commission, join Judy Woodruff to discuss the latest developments.
SUMMARY: Lanny Davis is one of two attorneys representing Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer. Davis joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the legal implications of Cohen’s guilty plea, whether he plans to share information with the Mueller investigation and his desire to go forward with truth in his new life.
SUMMARY: For another perspective on Michael Cohen’s guilty plea, Judy Woodruff is joined by a former attorney general under President George W. Bush, Michael Mukasey. According to Mukasey, the payment in question would have violated campaign finance law only if its sole purpose was to influence the outcome of an election, which Mukasey says was not the case.
SUMMARY: President Trump today reiterated his belief that he is not implicated by the guilty pleas of his former lawyer, Michael Cohen. The President expressed frustration that he should be associated with Cohen’s crimes, saying they were “totally unrelated to the campaign.” Also, another longtime Trump friend is reportedly preparing to share additional information about the hush money payments Cohen made.
SUMMARY: In exchange for immunity, the Trump Organization's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, will reportedly talk to investigators about the reimbursements he helped arrange to Michael Cohen. Judy Woodruff gets analysis from Renato Mariotti a former federal prosecutor experienced in trying white-collar crime, and Caleb Melby who covers business and the Trump Organization for Bloomberg News.
It takes a special counsel to actually catch white-collar criminals.
This article was co-published with The New York Times.
Oh, the audacity of dopes. The crimes of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen are notable not just for how blatant they were but also for their lack of sophistication. The two men did little to hide their lying to banks and the Internal Revenue Service. One can almost sympathize with them: If it wasn’t for their decision to attach themselves to the most unlikely President in modern history, there’s every reason to think they might be still working their frauds today.
But how anomalous are Mssrs. Manafort and Cohen? Are there legions of K Street big shots working for foreign despots and parking their riches in Cypriot bank accounts to avoid the IRS? Are many political campaigns walking felonies waiting to be exposed? What about the world of luxury residential building in which Cohen plied his trade with the Trump Organization?
The answer is more disturbing than the questions: We don’t know. We don’t know because the cops aren’t on the beat. Resources have been stripped from white-collar enforcement. The FBI shifted agents to work on international terror in the wake of 9/11. White-collar cases made up about one-tenth of the Justice Department’s cases in recent years, compared with one-fifth in the early 1990s. The IRS’ criminal enforcement capabilities have been decimated by years of budget cuts and attrition. The Federal Election Commission is a toothless organization that is widely flouted.
No wonder Cohen and Manafort were so brazen. They must have felt they had impunity.
How could they not? Any person in any bar in America can tell you who was held accountable for the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, which peaked 10 years ago next month: No one. No top officer from any major bank went to prison.
But the problem goes beyond big banks. The Department of Justice — in both Democratic and Republican administrations — has lost the will and ability to prosecute top executives across corporate America, at large industrial firms, tech giants, retailers, drug makers and so on. Instead the Department of Justice reaches settlements with corporations, which pay in dollars instead of the liberty of their top officers and directors.
Beginning with a charge to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, special counsel Robert Mueller has fallen upon a rash of other crimes. In doing so, he has exposed how widespread and serious our white-collar fraud problem really is, and how lax enforcement has been for years.
At least he is also showing a way out of the problem. He and his team are demonstrating that the proper attention, resources, technique and experience can go a long way to rectify the white-collar prosecution crisis.
What’s Mueller’s secret? For one thing, he has a focus. He and his team have sufficient resources to go after a discrete set of investigations. In the early 2000s, the Justice Department had similar success setting up the Enron Task Force, a special SWAT team of government lawyers that prosecuted top executives of the failed Texas energy trader. That contrasts with the financial crisis, when the Justice Department never created a similar task force. No single department official was responsible for the prosecutions of bankers after the global meltdown.
The investigation’s techniques are also instructive. The Southern District of New York, which was referred the Cohen case by Mueller, raided President Trump’s former attorney’s offices and fought for access to the materials, even as Cohen asserted attorney-client privilege. When federal prosecutors investigate large companies, out of custom and deference they rarely use such aggressive tactics. They place few wiretaps, conduct almost no undercover operations and do almost no raids. Instead government attorneys reach carefully negotiated agreements about which documents they can review, the product of many hours of discussion with high-powered law firms on behalf of their clients. All the battles over privileged materials happen behind closed doors and without the benefit of a disinterested special master, as the Cohen case had.
Indeed it’s worse than that. The government has essentially privatized corporate law enforcement. The government effectively outsources the investigations to the companies themselves. The companies, typically trying to appear cooperative or to forestall government action, hire law firms to do internal investigations. Imagine if Mueller relied on Trump to investigate whether he colluded with the Russians or violated any other laws, and Trump hired Rudy Giuliani’s firm to do the probe.
The aggressive Mueller techniques have yielded the most crucial element for white-collar cases: flippers; i.e., wrongdoers who agree to testify against their co-conspirators. Rick Gates, the Manafort protégé, helped tighten his mentor’s noose. We are going to see in the next few months how many people flip and what they will say. No wonder President Trump mused that flipping “almost ought to be illegal.”
Mueller’s experience has given him the courage to take cases to trial, where juries are mercurial and the federal bench has turned hostile. Mueller’s prosecutors tried a “thin case” against Manafort, as the expression goes, boiling their evidence down to a few elements that the jury could absorb easily. They even managed to overcome the open hostility of U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis. Good prosecutors are used to that in white-collar cases. Judges and justices have not looked favorably upon white-collar prosecutions for more than a decade now, overturning verdicts and narrowing statutes. But with well-marshaled evidence and clear presentation, prosecutors can surmount the difficulties.
Moreover, Mueller isn’t looking to go soft in order to preserve his professional viability. I’m assuming that at age 74, he’s not going to go through the revolving door after this. That hasn’t been true for most top Justice Department officials in recent years. Many of them come from the defense bar and when they leave government they go back to defending large corporations. The same goes with the younger prosecutors who negotiate those corporate settlements. Almost all go on to become corporate defense attorneys. In those negotiations, they are auditioning for their next jobs, wanting to display their dazzling smarts but also eventually needing to appear like reasonable people and avoid being depicted by the white-collar bar as cowboys unworthy of a prestigious partnership.
Of course, we don’t know whether Mueller can go all the way to the top. The big issue in white-collar crime is whether the Justice Department can prosecute CEOs. Sure, it occasionally brings charges against lower-level executives of major corporations, but hasn’t held the chief of a Fortune 500 company accountable in more than a decade. While most observers believe Mueller will adhere to policy and not indict the President, will his report to Congress implicate the chief executive of the United States, if the evidence warrants it?
One man cannot fix the large problem on his own, however. “For these individual episodic financial crimes, the government can muster the capacity and courage to investigate and prosecute,” says Paul Pelletier, a former federal prosecutor who recently ran for Congress in a Democratic primary. “The real question is whether, in the context of a national economic crisis, the Department of Justice has sufficient experience, resources and leadership to effectively tackle it. I’d argue that it’s pretty obvious it does not.”
For that, the Justice Department requires more resources and bodies than the government devotes to white-collar crime today, and probably some changes in the law.
Nevertheless, this should be a moment of reflection for white-collar prosecutors. It should not take a special counsel to uncover millions in bank fraud, money laundering and tax evasion. Using proper techniques, prioritizing crimes that can harm millions of people and stiffening their obsequious posture toward corporate executives will go a ways to remedying the situation.
Here’s the bad news, which will be the least surprising thing you’ll read today: the Trump administration is moving in the opposite direction. Its law enforcement agencies are engaged in something of a regulatory strike, especially when it comes to white-collar enforcement. Regulators are not policing companies or industries and are not referring cases to the Justice Department. The number of white-collar cases filed against individuals is lower than at any time in more than 20 years, according to research done by Syracuse University. The Justice Department’s fines against companies fell 90 percent during Trump’s first year in office, compared with in Obama’s last year in office, according to Public Citizen.
That must be sweet music to not just to other Manaforts and Cohens but also any corporate malefactors out there.
SUMMARY: The trial against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was filled with detailed accounting records and a star witness whose credibility is in question. Prosecutors argue documents prove that Manafort willfully committed bank and tax fraud. The defense never called a witness, claiming the evidence points to clerical mistakes. William Brangham joins Amna Nawaz to break it down.
SUMMARY: Rick Gates, the key witness in the trial of President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, took the stand again Tuesday to face tough questions from Manafort’s legal team. As Gates offered detailed testimony about Manafort's alleged financial crimes, the defense sought to portray him as an unreliable witness. William Brangham learns more from former federal prosecutor Seth B. Waxman.
SUMMARY: Paul Manafort, the first defendant charged by special counsel Robert Mueller to go to trial, is accused of working as an unregistered lobbyist for several pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. William Brangham joins John Yang from the courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, to explain the contours of the case so far.
Paul Manafort orchestrated a multimillion-dollar conspiracy to evade U.S. tax and banking laws, leaving behind a trail of lies as he lived a lavish lifestyle, prosecutors said Tuesday as they laid out their case against the former Trump campaign chairman.
During his opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Uzo Asonye told the jury that Manafort considered himself above the law as he funneled tens of millions of dollars through offshore accounts. That “secret income” was used to pay for personal expenses such as a $21,000 watch, a $15,000 jacket made of ostrich, and more than $6 million worth of real estate paid for in cash, Asonye said.
“A man in this courtroom believed the law did not apply to him — not tax law, not banking law,” Asonye said as he sketched out the evidence gathered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team in Manafort’s bank fraud and tax evasion trial.
It’s the first trial arising from Mueller’s investigation into potential ties between Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign and Russia. Mueller was not present in the courtroom.
Defense attorney Thomas Zehnle said in his opening statement that Manafort trusted others to keep track of the millions of dollars he was earning from his Ukrainian political work.
He made clear that undermining the credibility of Rick Gates, his former business associate and the government’s star witness, is central to the defense strategy. Zehnle said Manafort, earning millions as a political consultant helping officials in other parts of the world, relied on Gates and others — including a professional accounting firm — to keep watch over the money.
It’s the first trial arising from Mueller’s investigation into potential ties between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. Mueller was not present in the courtroom.
“Money’s coming in fast. It’s a lot, and Paul Manafort trusted that Rick Gates was keeping track of it,” Zehnle said. “That’s what Rick Gates was being paid to do.”
He warned jurors that Gates could not be trusted and was the type of witness who would say anything he could to save himself from a lengthy prison sentence and a crippling financial penalty.
Gates, who spent years working for Manafort in Ukraine and is also accused of helping him falsify paperwork used to obtain the bank loans, cut a plea deal with Mueller earlier this year. Gates also worked as an aide on Trump’s campaign.
Manafort, who has been jailed for nearly two months, wore a black suit and appeared fully engaged in his defense, whispering with his attorneys during jury selection and scribbling notes as the prosecution began its opening statement.
Before the start of jury selection Tuesday, prosecutors filed an expanded list of its evidence exhibits, including several email chains between Manafort and Stephen Calk, a Chicago bank chairman. The added evidence also appears to include documents related to bank accounts in Cyprus.
The government intends to show that Manafort funneled more than $60 million in proceeds from his Ukrainian political consulting through offshore accounts and hid a “significant” portion of it from the IRS.
Asonye said Manafort created “bogus” loans, falsified documents and lied to his tax preparer and bookkeeper to conceal the money, which he obtained from Ukrainian oligarchs through a series of shell company transfers and later from fraudulently obtained bank loans in the U.S.
But Zehnle disputed prosecutors’ account that Manafort was trying to conceal his earnings by storing money in bank accounts in Cyprus. He said that arrangement was not Manafort’s doing but was instead the preferred method of payment of the supporters of the pro-Russia Ukrainian political party who were paying his consulting fees.
Defense lawyers also sought to address head-on Manafort’s wealth and the images of a gaudy lifestyle that jurors are expected to see during the trial.
“Paul Manafort traveled in circles that most people will never know and he’s gotten handsomely rewarded for it,” Zehnle said. “We do not dispute that.”
The judge even interrupted the prosecutor during his opening statements to caution him against suggesting there was something criminal about being a multimillionaire.
“It isn’t a crime to have a lot of money and be profligate in your spending,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said.
Prosecutors made no reference to Trump in their opening statement nor discussed in any way Manafort’s leadership of the Trump campaign, or the ongoing investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the president’s associates. Despite that, Manafort’s case is widely viewed as a test to the legitimacy of Mueller’s ongoing probe, which Trump has dismissed as a “witch hunt.”
“There was No Collusion (except by Crooked Hillary and the Democrats)!” Trump tweeted early Tuesday.
The trial is expected to last several weeks.
“It isn’t a crime to have a lot of money and be profligate in your spending,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said.
At jury selection earlier Tuesday, the pool faced questions from both sides and the judge as they tried to weed out potential prejudice in what has become a highly publicized and politically divisive investigation. A jury of six men and six women was ultimately selected, along with four alternate jurors.
Manafort has a second trial scheduled for September in the District of Columbia. It involves allegations that he acted as an unregistered foreign agent for Ukrainian interests and made false statements to the U.S. government.
The other 31 people charged by Mueller so far have either pleaded guilty or are Russians seen as unlikely to enter an American courtroom. Three Russian companies have also been charged. One of those companies has pleaded not guilty and is fighting the allegations in federal court in Washington.
