ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Federal prosecutors on Wednesday started presenting the core of their bank- and tax-fraud case against Paul Manafort, producing invoices and other documents that they said would show he hid income by routing funds from overseas accounts directly to landscapers, antique-rug dealers and other vendors in the U.S.
The prosecution's focus on Manafort's personal finances -- at times laid out in painstaking detail -- revealed the vast amount of evidence gathered by special counsel Robert Mueller's team against the longtime political consultant. But it also tried the patience of U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, who repeatedly scolded the government's attorneys for what he said was excessive and unnecessary information.
Ellis warned prosecutors Wednesday against using the word "oligarchs" to describe wealthy Ukrainians and admonished them for spending so much time documenting Manafort's extravagant lifestyle.
It's not a crime to be wealthy, he noted. And the pejorative term "oligarchs" and evidence of home renovations aren't necessarily relevant to the charges in question, he added.
The trial is the first courtroom test for the special counsel, who was authorized last year to investigate Russia's efforts to sway the 2016 election and to determine whether Donald Trump's presidential campaign was involved. So far, Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, is the lone person to stand trial as a result of the ongoing investigation, even though the charges of bank fraud and tax evasion are unrelated to possible collusion with the Russians.
At the heart of the government's case are allegations that Manafort sought to evade taxes on a portion of $60 million he earned as a political consultant to Viktor Yanukovych, who at the time was Ukraine's pro-Russia president. Manafort, a veteran Republican lobbyist and political operative, also has been charged with defrauding banks in loans he obtained after his income from Ukraine dropped off.
In an effort to establish the breadth of Manafort's work for Yanukovych, prosecutors spent part of the morning questioning Daniel Rabin, a media consultant.
Rabin told the jury that he'd worked with Manafort from 2006-14, writing scripts and producing more than 50 ads for Yanukovych and his party.
"He demanded a lot of the people that worked for him," Rabin said of Manafort. "He was thorough. He was strict."
Sustaining a defense objection, Ellis blocked prosecutors from showing jurors three photographs featuring Yanukovych, limiting them to one. Even for that one, Ellis denied a prosecutor's request to post it on TV monitors in the courtroom.
Rabin also identified Manafort's former top deputy, Rick Gates, as Manafort's "gatekeeper" and point of contact for financial and travel issues, perhaps buttressing the defense argument that it was Gates' machinations that got Manafort into trouble.
Still, the trial has pulled back the curtain on the former lobbyist who steered Trump's election efforts for a time, including descriptions of Manafort's $15,000 jacket made of ostrich and the more than $6 million in cash he put toward real estate.
One witness, Maximillian Katzman, said Manafort was one of the best customers at the luxury menswear boutique where he used to work in Midtown Manhattan.
Between 2010 and 2014, Manafort spent $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 check, Katzman said, Manafort was the only customer at that time who paid by wire transfers from foreign bank accounts.
On the witness stand, Katzman was asked to review invoices from Manafort's purchases.
Manafort spent more than $100,000 at the store in 2010 and more than $444,000 in 2013, according to Katzman.
"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 $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.
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."
Prosecutors also questioned an FBI agent who described the July 2017 raid on Manafort's Virginia condominium, saying he knocked multiple times before entering with a key. He found Manafort sitting inside.
The searches described by agent Matthew Mikuska found expensively tailored suits and documents related to other luxury items reportedly bought by Manafort, including two silk rugs bought for $160,000 paid from offshore accounts.
But when prosecutors introduced photos of Manafort's high-end condo and expensive suits, Ellis interrupted so as to limit the growing list of evidence jurors would have to consider.
"All this document shows is that Mr. Manafort had a lavish lifestyle," Ellis said. "It isn't relevant."
Greg Andres, one of the lead prosecutors, argued that documenting Manafort's spending for the jury was important to the case.
"Judge, this is not an effort to prove Mr. Manafort lived lavishly," Andres said. "It's evidence of his income."
After sending the jurors out for their morning break, Ellis spoke to the lawyers.
"I'm wondering how you're going to tie Mr. Manafort to these monies, other than 'Mr. Manafort is awash in money,'" Ellis said.
When prosecutor Uzo Asonye said the prosecution must prove he didn't disclose offshore income, Ellis said: "Is that anything different than what I just said?"
Ellis seemed to grow impatient after being told that attorneys on both sides were seen rolling their eyes after leaving the bench or in response to his rulings. The lawyers' facial expressions, Ellis said, appeared to show them thinking: "Why do we have to put up with this idiot judge?"
The proceedings caught the attention of President Donald Trump, who defended his 2016 hiring of Manafort and suggested Manafort was being treated worse than mobster Al Capone. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president indeed felt Manafort had been treated unfairly.
"Why didn't government tell me that he was under investigation," Trump tweeted Wednesday. "These old charges have nothing to do with Collusion - a Hoax!"
Manafort's attorneys are putting the blame on Gates, Manafort's business associate.
Gates was expected to be the government's star witness at the trial, but Asonye said he could not say with certainty whether Gates would testify. He later clarified to say the uncertainty applies to any witness, not just Gates, as the prosecution team assesses the pace of the trial.
Asonye also told Ellis that prosecutors expect to rest their case next week, noting that they are "ahead of schedule."
Manafort has a second trial scheduled for September in the District of Columbia. It involves allegations that he acted as an unregistered foreign agent for Ukrainian interests and made false statements to the U.S. government.
Information for this article was contributed by Chad Day, Eric Tucker, Matthew Barakat, Anne Flaherty and Stephen Braun of The Associated Press; by David Voreacos and Andrew Harris of Bloomberg News; by Rachel Weiner, Justin Jouvenal, Rosalind S. Helderman, Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky of The Washington Post; and by Sharon LaFraniere and Emily Cochrane of The New York Times.
A Section on 08/02/2018