Chris Hayes discusses the days top news. Another round of Election Sabotage is underway. And the trump official who says his warnings about the psychological damage of separated families was ignored. Good evening, from new york, i am chris hayes. Paul manafort is a shrewd liar so says the prosecution in the Opening Statement in the trial. Opening statement and even the testimony of first witness hours ago, Paul Manafort facing 18 counts. Bank fraud, tax evaluation, and conspiracy charges. Work with should note which predated his duties on the campaign of donald trump. And zoe fillman. I wrote down the word astonishing greed. We knew the outline of this tale from the indictment and court documents. But another thing to hear it lay out in court. This scheme Whereby Manafort was earning 16 million. But instead of taking the money in a wire transfer, he concocted this elaborate scheme to accept it in loans which werent really loans all to evade taxes. And interestingly, when his client was
Chris Hayes discusses the days top news. Allegations in the u. S. So we talked about this sort of circumventing the american tax system. Overseas payments and overseas Bank Accounts and never reported which is what is alleged. What is the bank fraud part of the case. It is the prosecutors allege that after 2014, when the spigot of cash was turned off, he needed to fund his lavish lifestyle. What he had was Real Estate Holdings that he purchased through the bogus loans. What he did, was he began overstating the value of these property. Faking a profit and loss statement for his company. Showing cash that he didnt have for bankers including while he was chairman of the campaign. They call it bank c and that is
the kind of fraud that they are alleging. Prosecutors are going to show that in fact it was false. Zoe, tad davine was there. He was a partner with manafort in his work in ukraine, what did he have to say . So tad talked about being brought in starting in 2005 to head Media Strateg
cooperate. a lot of people feel like in similar situations, a case like this would have been pled out by now. i was surprised that it didn t plead much earlier, but at a certain point, he had spent so much money on the defense, that it makes no sense for him to start talking about cooperating at that point. but also very interesting if he is blaming his partner rick gates, rick gates pled out in part because he had no money. so now you have manafort saying he stole my money, embezzled money from me. how come rick gates doesn t have money to defend himself and you do. that would be my question. so that under cuts the argument that rick gates took the money. this courtroom which is sealed. at a time when it is the president s campaign manager. and the stuff that they are
at the defense, and talk about rick gates who is a central witness here. the defense opening statement focused on rick gates who is paul manafort s deputy. and look, it was all this guy, the guy who is cooperating who is going to be testifying against our client, he is the guy in this. you can t trust him. it is often the approach of defendants where it is always someone else s fault. it seldom works especially in a case like this where the evidence will be visible to the jurors. they will see how much money came in, how much money was reported. and they will see the signatures on all of the bank accounts overseas. they will see who had the foreign bank accounts and who didn t. and i think this won t ultimately be successful.
and some of this evidence was evidence that manafort asked the judge to keep out of the trial, argued that getting too much into yanukovych might prejudice the jury. there is no agreement between the parties about how manafort made his money. how much money he made, where it came from. so this was relevant. and davine s testimony illustrated what appeared to be central tension. exactly how hands on manafort was in his business. whether he was the day-to-day, he knew everything that was going on. the questions from prosecutors tried to get at this idea of manafort as very hands-on. very involved in every aspect of his busy, trying to counter perhaps the defense narrative that manafort was high level and entrusted his financial dealings with his associates like rick gates and he thought even was going to do what they were supposed to with his finances and no intent to mislead any u.s. officials.