A juror from Paul Manafort’s financial fraud trial said late Wednesday that one holdout prevented the former Trump campaign manager from being convicted on all counts. They sketched a portrait of a man who raked in millions in foreign lobbying and tried every means he could to hide the income in offshore bank accounts to evade federal taxes.
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That the jury failed to reach a verdict on 10 other counts, causing the judge to declare a mistrial on those charges, is undeniably a disappointment for the prosecution.
US District Judge TS Ellis III repeatedly grew impatient with prosecutors as they sought to demonstrate Manafort’s garish tendencies.
The charges on which Manafort was convicted didn’t involve allegations of illegal collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia, Mueller’s primary focus.
Six women and six men comprised Manafort’s jury.
“The focus of the Manafort trial may not be about Trump or whether the president sought to obstruct Mueller’s Russian Federation investigation, but it speaks to the overall credibility of the Russian Federation investigation”. “This has nothing to do with Russian collusion”.
That’s one of the charges that Cohen, the former personal attorney to President Donald Trump, has pleaded guilty to, outlined by prosecutors from the US District Court for the Southern District of NY in a court filing.
Manafort stood quietly while the verdict was being read by the clerk.
With a crucial congressional election looming in November, Trump is desperate to convince voters the investigation is politically biased, in hopes of protecting his crucial Republican majority in both the Senate and House of Representatives.
Manafort’s attorneys built their defense argument around Gates, painting him as the true culprit behind their client’s crimes and asserting that Manafort’s only mistake was “placing his trust in the wrong person”, referring to Gates. “He is trying to soak it all in”, Downing told Reuters. “Mr. Trump’s lawyers said he directed Michael Cohen to make that payment”. Facing up to five years in prison, the admissions were a dramatic change from Cohen’s earlier boasts that he was Trump’s “fixer” and would “take a bullet” for the president. Manafort is 69 years old.
Manafort’s conviction served as a vindication of Mueller’s work as investigators continue to probe potential misdeeds by the president and those in his orbit.
She said neither positive nor negative sentiments about Trump influenced the decision.
David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in Miami, said the guilty verdict on eight of 18 counts was “a significant victory” for Mueller and that “the mistrial on the remaining 10 counts is a shallow victory for the defense”. They convicted him on all possible tax fraud counts, one for each year from 2010 to 2014. They distracted him with conversation about legislative issues and other topics, the people added.
The New York Times reported Sunday, based on anonymous sources, that prosecutors have been focusing on more than $20 million in loans obtained by taxi businesses that Cohen and his family own. Jurors are not supposed to discuss the case until they’ve heard all the evidence and begin deliberations.
One count on which the jury was hung was a $5.5 million loan that did not close. While Manafort’s trial was not directly related to the allegations of collusion with Russian Federation during the 2016 Presidential campaign, it did serve as a test of the work Mueller’s team has done.
Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani sought to cast the blame exclusively on Cohen in a Tuesday statement, saying: “There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the President in the government’s charges against Mr. Cohen”.
President Donald Trump confronted one of the most perilous moments of his presidency after two onetime members of his inner circle simultaneously were labeled “guilty” of criminal charges.
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In October 2016, an agent for an adult film actress informed an editor of a magazine that the woman was willing to make public statements and confirm on the record her alleged past affair with Trump.
