The point of all of this, I assume, is to prove to the jury that Manafort was indeed in charge of his business and that Gates could not have been conducting all of these illegal activities behind his back. I expect that there will be a number of other witnesses to establish this as well. Manafort’s entire defense strategy will have been demolished before this day ends. Have fun in prison Paul.
A photo of Yanukovych? Here ya go.
Makes me wonder if Putin is related to Sessions. Nah. Putin’s ears aren’t big enough to be a relative.
So, along with everything else, Manifort is a deadbeat.
Ooops! Now photos of the Russian Crime Oligarchs are going wide-public. This will not play well in Moscow. Manafort really should ask for protective custody and a food taster.
So … Manifort is a deadbeat.
That explains it: it was a spiritual similarity that drew Paul and Donnie together.
I don’t follow your logic. How does this demolish that defense strategy?
It seems to say, “I dunno, I guess I was paying Manafort, but now that you mention it all of my transaction were with Gates…”
Or am I misreading?
The strict and thorough parts suggest that Manafort was supervising Gates closely. As do several tons of documents.
Yes, I know Mueller is a genius and has the best legal team since Perry Mason hired Della Street. But If it’s not clear to us, it’s not clear to the jury, which means it’s not good for the prosecution.
When all is said and done in this trial, this battle is going to be one of documents:
By all indications, Mueller and his team have a fortress of documentation of how Manafort earned and then routed his earnings from European lobbying through offshore banks and shell corporations, submitted false applications for bank loans that misstated his wealth and the value of his existing assets, and lied to authorities.
Unless Manafort’s attorneys can come up with a similar set of documents to document their claims that it was Gates doing all the manipulating, it is very hard to see how their defense is going to succeed.
But then hey…tens of thousands of Americans believe that Sandy Hook was a staged event, that a pedophile ring was operating from the basement of a pizza shop and that Donnie is the greatest President America has ever had.
Very true, but it’s very early. They’re establishing facts systematically, in an “A=B, and B=C, therefore A=C” fashion. Also keep in mind that the prosecution do not know the defense’s strategy in advance, so they have to build part of their own strategy around preemptively squashing lines of argument that might reasonably come up. One of those possibilities was “Manafort was barely involved in this stuff, he was basically the CEO of his consulting company but left day-to-day functions to others”. We’re not through the first full day and that one’s already squished pretty flat. Looks like the defense wasn’t planning to use that argument after all, but it pays to be thorough.
Actually, he was just a coffee boy for the Trump campaign. And I am Queen of All the Russias.
Manafort having a light touch with his business a separate from his personal financial structure. How can Manafort claim Gates set up the convoluted financial structures (including opening personal accounts for Manafort—not believable); without knowing?
Manafort had to jump through hoops to get at his cash. He would have been better off transferring millions of $$$ to an account in a Cypriot bank that issued a diamond/platinum/rare earth element charge card with $20M or unlimited credit limit, charge everything and payoff the balance each month.
TPM - Please stop running those Priority Oregon ads on this site. Priority Oregon is a dark money, disinformation site running non-stop ads online and on television to discredit Oregon’s Democratic Governor, Kate Brown. They used half truths and outright falsehoods. They don’t belong here.
Just the other day an acquaintance started going on about Hillary Clinton having mudered Vince Foster. There has to be some kind of dysfunctional psychological mechanism that makes people believe things that make no sense. I’m including 9/11ers in that cohort.