Rick Gates (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)
Paul Manafort is on trial for tax evasion, and after the government’s star witness, Rick Gates, finished up his second day of blistering testimony, Manafort’s lawyer pantsed him on cross-examination.
If you take the macro view, everything that has happened so far is entirely standard and normal. The government presents a lot of documentary evidence as to how the scheme worked. The government brings out a witness, a co-conspirator who copped a plea in exchange for his testimony. The defense questions the credibility of this witness, claiming they know so much because they were the wrong-doer, and is now lying about the defendant to save their own skin. Everything is proceeding exactly as planned, by both sides.
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But at the micro level… Jesus Christ, where is the popcorn. The Gates testimony has been like a Law & Order episode if Law & Order were dissolved into a liquid and injected directly into your veins.
Yesterday, Gates admitted to helping Manafort embezzle money to avoid taxes. Today, it was more of the same, including admissions that he helped Manafort report income as “loans” to avoid tax liability.
But, near the end of his testimony, Gates gave the people who really don’t care whether or not Manafort evaded income taxes something they wanted to hear. From the Washington Post:
Some of the only direct references to President Trump and his campaign at the trial of Paul Manafort just occurred. Rick Gates testified that Manafort resigned as the campaign’s chairman in August 2016, but that he remained, continuing to work for the campaign.
After Trump’s election, Gates went to work for the committee organizing Trump’s inauguration.
Prosecutor Greg Andres showed Gates emails from Manafort, which showed that Gates’s former boss requested that Gates use his position in the Trump campaign to offer a series of favors to Stephen Calk, the founder and CEO of Federal Savings Bank, one of the banks that extended Manafort a loan in 2016.
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The Manafort trial doesn’t really have anything to do with Donald Trump… beyond the already obvious point that Trump hired a compromised campaign manager with deep ties to Russian interests. If there was direct, knowing collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, Manafort would have been the conduit.
But this trial will do more to show that Manafort had the motive and opportunity to align the Trump campaign with the Russians, not that he did it. Like everything else, Gates’s testimony about his time working on the transition speaks to Manafort’s desperation more than Trump’s intentions.
And that’s only if you believe Gates. Manafort’s lead attorney, Kevin Downing, got his chance to cross-examine Gates this afternoon and, as expected, Downing makes Gates look like a lying, shady rat.
“When did you start providing false and misleading information to the special counsel’s office?” he asked.
Gates pleaded guilty in Washington, D.C. federal court to doing just that. But as he did earlier, seemed to waver on whether he actually lied or simply misspoke about a meeting Manafort took with a U.S. congressman.
“There were instances when I struggled in interviews” with details, he said. “I struggled to get all the information out, to some extent.”…
“You knowingly and intentionally lied?” Downing asked.
“Uh…. yes,” Gates finally said. But he said, “I provided false information to the special counsel’s office prior to my plea agreement,” not after. In his many sessions preparing for trial, he said, he told the truth.
That was just the appetizer. Downing next busted Gates for stealing money from Manafort to carry on an extramarital affair:
Before even being asked the question directly, Gates, in a quiet strained voice, told Downing that it was true–he said about 10 years ago, he had “another relationship.” In other words, he had had an extramarital affair…
Gates testified that he had used money embezzled from Manafort to help fund his relationship. Downing asked him to agree that he had spent as much as $3 million on this purpose. Gates said he believed the figure was lower, but, again, agreed that he had indeed taken money from Manafort without his permission.
The government has a bunch of other witnesses and loads of documentary evidence. You don’t need to believe that Rick Gates is a good guy to believe what he says, and you don’t even really need to believe Rick Gates to believe that Manafort is guilty.
But it only takes one juror to hang a jury. And if anybody decides that this is all a Trump “witch hunt,” or that Gates committed all of the fraud himself, that might be enough for Manafort to wiggle free.
In the meantime, I’m cooking up some ostrich steaks that go well with this Shiraz while I watch the show.
Paul Manafort trial Day 6: Gates testifies Manafort wanted him to use Trump job to give lender favors [Washington Post]
Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.