By Chris Megerian and Eliza Fawcett
Los Angeles Times
ALEXANDRIA, Va. —Paul Manafort’s trial began in earnest Tuesday with opening statements from prosecutors and defense attorneys, the first salvos in a case that could send President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman to prison for the rest of his life.
Earlier in the day, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III seated a jury of six men and six women. There are also four alternates for the trial in case one of the original jurors isn’t able to complete his or her service.
The Eastern District of Virginia, where the trial is taking place, has a reputation for speedy proceedings, and Tuesday morning was no exception, with Ellis taking just four hours to winnow the 60-member jury pool down to the final selections.
By 9 a.m., when Manafort arrived, the dark-paneled courtroom was already filled to capacity. Dressed in a dark suit and flanked by his attorneys, he appeared calm and expressionless. His wife, Kathleen Manafort, arrived just before jury selection began at 10 a.m. and sat in the front row.
Ellis kept the mood in the courtroom light, telling anecdotes and eliciting laughs from time to time as he questioned the prospective jurors.
“I know I’m predictable,” he told one. “My wife says it’s one of my only virtues.”
As the attorneys on both sides conferred about which jurors to strike from the list, Manafort whispered to his lawyers, writing on legal pads and riffling through papers.
During jury questioning, Ellis disclosed the names of the financial institutions with which Manafort allegedly had dealings. The firms had not previously been named in court documents although they had been previously reported. They are the investment banking firm Genesis Capital, Citizens Bank, the Banc of California, and Federal Savings Bank in Chicago.
Before court opened, a small crowd of demonstrators gathered across the street from the federal courthouse in Alexandria. “Was the $18k karaoke machine worth it?” one protester’s sign read, referring to one of Manafort’s extravagant purchases.
“Trump wouldn’t spend one second in prison for you!” another sign said.
Manafort, who guided Trump’s campaign through the tumultuous Republican National Convention two years ago, faces 18 charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and conspiracy at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital. He has pleaded not guilty to each of the charges.
It is the first trial on charges brought by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who was appointed last year to investigate whether anyone from Trump’s team conspired with Russians to influence the presidential election.
The special counsel’s office said it began probing Manafort because of his connections to Russians, and they’ve accused one of his business partners in Ukraine of having ties to Russian intelligence. However, Manafort has not been charged with campaign-related crimes, and prosecutors have said they don’t plan to present evidence of conspiracy with Russians.
The case that’s going to trial this week involves Manafort’s time as an adviser to Ukraine’s former president, Viktor Yanukovych. Prosecutors accuse Manafort of laundering more than $30 million through offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes and then using bank fraud to boost his income when Yanukovych was ousted and Manafort’s work in Ukraine dwindled.
The special counsel’s office has assembled a case involving 35 witnesses who could be called to testify, as well as more than 500 pieces of evidence, including photographs and financial records.
Manafort faces another trial in federal court in Washington next month on related charges, including failing to register as a foreign agent for his work on behalf of Ukraine.
Two of the charges, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct, were added in June, when prosecutors accused Manafort of trying to tamper with potential witnesses. A federal judge on June 15 sent Manafort to jail for violating his bail based on the evidence behind those new accusations.
Before being transferred to a detention center near the courthouse, Manafort had an unusually cushy stay behind bars at the Northern Neck Regional Jail in rural Virginia, about two hours from Alexandria, prosecutors said in a recent court filing. He didn’t have to wear a prison uniform, and he had his own laptop computer to help prepare for his trial.
