Jury said it could not agree on 10 other charges, but verdicts represent resounding victory for special counsel Robert Mueller

Members of the defense team for Paul Manafort leave federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Tuesday.
Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been found guilty on eight fraud charges – a resounding victory for special counsel Robert Mueller and his team in the first trial arising from their investigation.

Manafort, 69, was convicted on Tuesday of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failure to report a foreign bank account. The charges carry a maximum sentence of decades in prison. He avoided conviction on some charges however, with the jury saying it could not reach a consensus on 10 out of 18 total counts.

He had been charged with bank fraud, tax fraud, failure to report foreign bank accounts and conspiracy. Some of the fraud activity overlapped with his time chairing the Trump election campaign.

Manafort stood stony-faced as he was found guilty on the eight counts, but winked at his wife Kathleen upon leaving the courtroom. Wearing a navy blue suit, he appeared weathered by his time in jail. His tan had faded, and his hair had greyed.

Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, told reporters that his client is now “evaluating all of his options”. Downing also said that his client was “disappointed of not getting acquittals all the way through or a complete hung jury on all counts”.

Arriving for a campaign-style rally in Charleston, West Virginia, Trump called the verdict a “witch hunt” and “a disgrace.”

Trump portrayed the Manafort prosecution, which grew out of an FBI investigation predating the 2016 campaign, as an unnatural outgrowth of the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the election.

“This has nothing to do with Russian collusion,” Trump said. “These are witch hunts and it’s a disgrace... It had nothing to do with Russian collusion, we continue the witch hunt.”

Manafort faces additional charges in a separate case, to convene in Washington DC in September.

The jury returned the verdicts on its fourth day of deliberation. Afterwards, federal judge TS Ellis III urged the jury not to share their deliberations with others, saying they owed a “duty of confidentiality” to their fellow jurors. Ellis praised attorneys both for the government and Manafort for their “effective and zealous representations”.

The Virginia trial did not delve into the nature of Trump campaign contacts with Russia, which is the focus of the Mueller investigation. But the conviction of a figure as prominent as Manafort, who ran the Trump campaign for a crucial five-month period in 2016, was a blow to the White House and a boost for the special counsel, which continues to investigate the Trump campaign.

The White House did not immediately comment on the verdict. Trump earlier suggested that Manafort was being “treated worse” than legendary gangster Al Capone while seeking to downplay Manafort’s role in his campaign. The president regularly calls the Mueller investigation a “witch-hunt”.

Manafort’s conviction brought the tally of former Trump advisers who have pleaded to or been found guilty of crimes in the Mueller investigation to four. Mueller has also secured guilty pleas from a California man and a London-based lawyer, and his team has indicted 26 Russian nationals and three Russian companies.

Prosecutors presented evidence that Manafort had lied to banks in seeking personal loans and lied to the Internal Revenue Service in reporting income related to his political consulting work in Ukraine and elsewhere.

The defense argued that the prosecution had failed to prove that the banks acted on false information allegedly submitted by Manafort and attacked the credibility of former Manafort protege Rick Gates, the government’s key witness.

Gates testified that Manafort had asked him to help falsify banking and tax records and knowingly submitted those records. Manafort conducted various frauds, prosecutors charged, to fund lavish lifestyle items from coastal real estate to bespoke suits to a $15,000 ostrich jacket.

The prospect of finishing his days in prison represented an astounding downfall for Manafort, a valued adviser to Republican presidents going back to Gerald Ford and once a top Washington lobbyist and power broker.

Manafort’s career took a lucrative turn in 2005, when he opened an office in Kiev, Ukraine, and began earning millions as a political consultant for a Moscow-aligned political party. He also struck up a business partnership with the Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash and with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin.

Ten years later, however, with his Ukrainian clients in exile and his former partners after him for money, Manafort faced mounting personal debts, according to witness testimony. Under increasing pressure, the seasoned political consultant made a bold play, offering his services to the greenhorn Trump campaign – for free.

Manafort could yet avoid prison time, if Judge Ellis determined that the evidence against Manafort had been insufficient, despite the jury verdict, in what would be an exercise of judicial power unique to federal criminal trials. Or Manafort could be pardoned by Trump.

Ellis suggested during the trial that he disagreed with aspects of the prosecution’s case. When prosecutors sought to include falsified documents Manafort submitted in a failed attempt to procure a loan, Ellis suggested that they ought to focus on loans that went through.

During the trial, Ellis repeatedly pushed the prosecution to speed up the presentation of its case; questioned the focus of the case; barred evidence such as pictures of luxury goods; and openly challenged the legal premise of the case.

Manafort spoke once during the trial, when asked by the judge whether he wished to testify in his own defense. “No, sir,” he said.

While the trial did not focus on influence peddling within the Trump campaign, emails presented by the prosecution showed that Manafort remained influential in the campaign until after the election – months after it emerged that he was under investigation by the FBI.

In one email, Manafort wrote to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to recommend the Federal Savings Bank CEO, Stephen Calk, for the position of secretary of the army. Witnesses at the trial said Calk had personally expedited $9.5m and $6.5m loans for Manafort.

“On it!” Kushner replied. Calk was not nominated for a Trump administration role.

In September in Washington DC Manafort is scheduled to go to trial on charges of conspiracy to launder tens of millions of dollars in overseas earnings, failing to register as a foreign agent and making false statements. He has a wife of 40 years and two adult children.

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Poster Comment:

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