Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman. Photo / AP file
US President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman spent more than a million dollars on suits and luxury clothes.
Much of the spending was paid with money from undeclared foreign accounts that he did not report to the IRS, federal prosecutors told a jury today.
The second day of the trial of Paul Manafort in Alexandria, Virginia, detailed the free-spending ways of the political consultant, from buying some of the most expensive suits in the world, to buying his daughter a nearly US$2 million home, paid for with cash.
The testimony about spending came as Trump publicly came to Manafort's defence, tweeting that prosecutors were treating him unfairly and attacking the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that led to the charges against Manafort.
"Attorney-General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further," the President tweeted.
Typically, government officials refrain from commenting on any criminal cases, particularly when those cases are on trial.
At the courthouse, where Manafort is fighting 18 counts of tax and bank fraud, the jury of six men and six women heard from a parade of witnesses who sold Manafort clothes, a home, and home renovations.
One witness, Maximillian Katzman, said Manafort was one of the best customers at the luxury menswear boutique where he used to work in Midtown Manahattan.
Between 2010 and 2014, Manafort spent US$929,000 on suits at the store. Katzman testified that Manafort was one of the store's top five customers, purchasing an unusually high number of suits. While most customers paid by cheque, Katzman said, Manafort was their only customer at that time who paid by wire transfers from foreign bank accounts.
Prosecutors have said the accounts Manafort used were never declared to the IRS, part of a long-running scheme, they allege, to evade paying taxes on millions of dollars in income.
On the witness stand, Katzman was asked to review invoices from Manafort's purchases. It took him a while to flip through a book of exhibits - invoice after invoice.
Paul Manafort worked for Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and many other highly prominent and respected political leaders. He worked for me for a very short time. Why didn’t government tell me that he was under investigation. These old charges have nothing to do with Collusion - a Hoax!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2018
Manafort spent more than US$100,000 at the store in 2010, and more than US$444,000 in 2013, according to Katzman.
The accounting of suit costs aggravated Judge T.S. Ellis, who has admonished prosecutors not to belabour the details of Manafort's lavish lifestyle but to stick strictly instead to the evidence that supports the charges.
"Let's move on, enough is enough," the judge said sternly, allowing the witness to describe the annual spending, but not the total amount over the five year period. The jury, the judge said, "can add."
Manafort was also a customer of House of Bijan, another luxury menswear shop. Between 2010 and 2012, Manafort spent US$334,000 at the shop, which bills itself as "the world's most expensive store."
The store's chief financial officer, Ronald Wall, testified that Manafort paid for the clothes with wire transfers.
This is idiotic. We didn't know Papadopoulos, with Manafort's okay, was trying to set up a back channel between the campaign and Putin's office until Mueller filed the plea agreement. https://t.co/svwA6hFgj6
— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) August 1, 2018
As with earlier witnesses, the subject of Manafort's spending irritated the judge, who told prosecutors: "You have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he signed tax documents to show he knowingly didn't represent his true income."
The charges against Manafort grew from Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and whether any Americans conspired with those efforts.
The trial, however, is not about Russia, or any such conspiracy, focused instead on the personal and business finances of Manafort, Trump's onetime campaign chairman.
Prosecutors charge Manafort made millions of unreported income while working as a political consultant for the Ukraine Government, and when those funds dried up in 2014, began lying to banks in order to get loans that would keep funding his lavish lifestyle.
"Part of the news is the fast pace of this trial. It's going much faster than we had anticipated, in part because the judge TS Elliot, is really pushing the prosecutors... to keep it moving" - @KenDilanianNBC on day 2 of the Manafort trial w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/OWhp26ChJR
— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) August 1, 2018
The judge has warned prosecutors not to inject Russian matters into the case, and instructed them not to use the word "oligarch" when describing some of the people connected to the case.
"An oligarch is just a despotic power exercised by a privileged few," Ellis said. "What I want to avoid . . . is somehow to use the term to mean he was consorting or paid by people who were criminals - there will be no evidence of that."
At the judge's urging, the trial has got off to a fast start, and it seemed to only accelerate on its second day.
At one point, prosecutor Uzo Asonye said it was possible the star witness in the case, Manafort's former right-hand man Rick Gates, may not be needed to testify, although that was met with some scepticism in the courtroom.
The prosecutors brought more than a half dozen witnesses to the stand, though they said they expect to finish presenting their case by next week, which means Manafort's trial could be even shorter than the three weeks initially predicted.
FBI agent testifies agents did knock before 6am search of Manafort apartment last year. Got no answer, then entered using key. '[Agent] said he did not know how the FBI obtained the key.' From @MelissaQuinn97: https://t.co/W0pBX4AQ3A
— Byron York (@ByronYork) August 1, 2018
"There are a lot of parallels between the kind of cases I used to do going against the mafia and this case"
— The Beat with Ari Melber on MSNBC 📺 (@TheBeatWithAri) August 1, 2018
Trump "is probably scared to death that Paul Manafort may try to flip if he's convicted" - @eliehonig pic.twitter.com/M3EKWXjL5k
.@newtgingrich: 'Good Chance' Manafort Wins at Trial, Making Mueller 'Look Like a Fool'https://t.co/cuknpy32AY
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 1, 2018
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