be the jury who is the fact finder. at one point, this forensic accountant testified that two of paul manafort s purported signatures appeared to her to be different. and the judge remarked you think those signatures are different? well, i guess the jury will decide. what is the jury supposed to make of that? he is almost testifying. so these interjections i think are incredibly inappropriate. now it may be that if and when the defense puts on a case, he does the same thing to them. but i do think that there are messages that the jury gets in these cases. the thing that bothers me the most is in his obsession, really to move the case along quickly, he often refuses to allow the jury to see exhibits in realtime. he says they can look at those later. but i think in a case as complex as this, it s really important to see those exhibits as they re coming in. you know, a trial is supposed to be a show-and-tell. they re getting the tell part, but not necessarily the show. and the idea of goi
he says they can look at those later. but i think in a case as complex as this it s really important to see those exhibits as they re coming in. you know, a trial is supposed to be a show-and-tell. they re getting the tell part, but not necessarily the show. and the idea of going back later and finding which one of these bank records matches up to the testimony of the witness is really difficult. so he allowed more of that today, of seeing these charts that were made by these experts, but i do worry about keeping those documents out of the view of the jury as we move things quickly to the detriment of the government who has the burden of proof. if the jury is not convinced, they means they can t find the defendant guilty. as paul newman s character said in the great courtroom movie the verdict, your honor, if you re going to try my case, try not to lose it. barbara mcquade, whose days start very early in that courtroom and who was so kind to stay late and bring us up to date on t
day seven in the trial of the president s former campaign chairman and jacket enthusiast paul manafort, and the star witness against manafort took the stand for a third straight day. rick gates pleaded guilty to helping manafort commit tax and bank fraud. manafort s defense made another attempt to discredit gates by pointing out he embezzled from his boss, and they called his character into question, getting gates to admit on the stand that he made many, many mistakes over the years. but the real meat of today s testimony came in the form of financial documents and flow charts. an fbi forensic accountant testified that manafort s lavish purchases coincided with massive wire transfers from foreign banks. an irs agent told the jury manafort hid $16 million from
and do it. about this early on in the investigation, they would have had the capacity and resources to move forward. obviously manafort is a tempting target for the government. he s someone i suspect they would like to have flip and cooperate because he can narrate much of what went on during the time he was the head of the campaign and during the time where the campaign plank about russia changed. it was about a 72-hour period over the last week where it looked like where manafort decided to drop the civil suit against mueller and suddenly it s obviously they had a plan b here to try to make rick gates the bad guy. it almost looked like they were trying to curry favor with the special counsel s office. do you think it s possible this trial doesn t go to its conclusion? that it gets stopped because they cut a deal? that s always a possibility. some defendants don t plead
dealings, obviously manafort is the connection the memo specifically authorizes collusion by the former campaign chairman himself. the investigation of russian ties clearly is not limited to more fringe players such as george papadopoulos or the ever surprising carter page. it means the fbi had a basis to suspect russian collusion involving the highest levels of the trump campaign. this gets interest will it s a lot of money laundering, not disclosing business interests. it doesn t look like collusion. now the pieces are starting to fall into place that a lot of money is changing hands. it looks like mueller has been circling the whole time, bringing in various players and pieces of this investigation. but never losing sight of the fact that what he s really investigating is whether or not there was russian interference