The experimental of Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign boss, initiated Tuesday, with the defense attempting to shift the blame to Rick Attendances — one of the longtime Republican strategist’s former top associates and a key witness for the prosecution.
Yet the prosecution asserted during gap arguments that Manafort “believed the law did not apply to him — not tax law, not banking law” — as he exaggerated massive amounts of cash on real estate and pricey clothes that allow for a $15,000 jacket “made from an ostrich.”
“He got whatever he wanted,” affiliate U.S. Attorney Uzo Asonye said in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia.
The prosecutor represented how Manafort had allegedly earned a whopping $60 million by working for pro-Russia machine politicians in Ukraine and then stashed that cash in shell companies and offshore bank accounts.
Asonye put about Manafort lived an “extravagant lifestyle,” funded by the “secret income” he was producing.
When that cash flow dried up as Manafort’s consulting shoppers lost power in Ukraine, he began duping banks about the phase of his financial position in an effort to win approval for loans, the prosecutor argued.
“He begot cash out of thin air,” Asonye said.
He said Manafort opened more than 30 bank accounts in three nations to hide his cash. Manafort, he added, failed to report $15 million in profits to the IRS from 2010 to 2014.
After Asonye spoke, Manafort’s lawyer, Thomas Zehnle, had Manafort bear up under and face jurors in the midst of an opening statement that sought to market blame for misconduct onto the shoulders of Manafort’s longtime business associate Assemblages.
“Here’s here because of one man: Rick Gates,” Zehnle said.
Doorways has pleaded guilty in the case, and he is expected to testify for prosecutors.
Manafort “was arising his trust in the wrong person,” Zehnle said, referring to Gates, whom he accused of “purloining millions” from Manafort’s firm and failing to report it on his own tax returns.
“Affluent’s coming in fast. It’s a lot, and Paul Manafort trusted that Rick Accesses was keeping track of it. …That’s what Rick Gates was being even a scored to do.”
Manafort trusted others to make sure “that these affections were done right,” the defense lawyer said. “The foundation of the esteemed counsel’s case against Manafort rests squarely on the shoulders of this falling star witness.”
The lawyer also said that Manafort agreed to come into payments from Ukraine’s Party of Regions into offshore bank accounts because the chairpersons of that party insisted on that system and created the accounts because they did not privation it known which candidates they were backing.
Manafort “did not willfully or intentionally fool” the IRS or other financial institutions, Zehnle said.
He accused prosecutors of spring the gun by prosecuting Manafort instead of conducting an audit of his financial records.
“U.S. ratepayers aren’t prosecuted for mistakes on their tax returns,” Zehnle said. “They’re audited.”
The barrister called Manafort a “talented political consultant and a good man” who was the first being in his family to attend college and who during his professional career had “rendered costly services to the U.S. system of government.”
As with the prosecution’s opening statement, Justice T.S. Ellis III interrupted Zehnle’s argument, telling him to stick to subjects that intention be covered by evidence expected to be introduced at trial.
After the statements, prosecutors conscripted their first witness: Tad Devine, a Democratic political consultant who work up with Manafort in Ukraine to get Viktor Yanukovych elected president in 2010. Devine was chief strategist for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ electioneer for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016.
Prosecutors presented Devine, 63, with a raft of discloses detailing his interactions over multiple years with Manafort and his consulting public limited company, Davis Manafort International.
Devine said he had a “friendly relationship” with Manafort and determined defense lawyer Richard Westling during cross-examination, “I think Paul go harder than anybody.”
Earlier Tuesday, 12 jurors and four alternates were picked for the cover, the first brought by special counsel Robert Mueller to go to trial.
Manafort, 69, opposites another separate trial in federal court in Washington, D.C., in September. That prove is also related to his consulting work in Ukraine.
He had his $10 million disenthral bond revoked last month after prosecutors said he had turned to tamper with potential witnesses against him. Earlier Tuesday, a federal fascinations court rejected his effort to be released from jail.