Donald Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty of 8 charges

Paul Manafort the longtime political operative who for months led Donald Trumps winning presidential campaign has been found guilty of eight financial crimes in the first trial victory of the special counsel investigation into the presidents associates A judge declared a mistrial on 10 other counts the jury could not agree onYesterdays verdict was part of a stunning onetwo punch of bad news for the White House coming as the presidents former lawyer Michael Cohen was pleading guilty in New York as part of a separate deal with prosecutors The jury returned the decision after deliberating four days on the charges of tax evasion and bank fraud against the former Trump campaign chairmanThe outcome almost certainly guarantees years of prison for Manafort and established the ability of special counsel Robert Muellers team to persuade a jury of average citizens despite months of partisan attacks including from Trump on the investigations integrity The verdict raised immediate questions of whether the president would seek to pardon Manafort the lone American charged by Mueller to opt for trial instead of cooperate The president has not revealed his thinking but spoke sympathetically throughout the trial of his onetime aide and at one point suggested that he had been treated worse than gangster Al CaponeThe more than twoweek trial presided over by the colourful and impatient US District Judge TS Ellis III has captured Trumps attention as he works to undermine Muellers investigation through a constant Twitter barrage and increasingly antagonistic statements from his lawyerspokesman Rudy Giuliani But Trump and his campaign were only a small part of Manaforts trial as jurors instead heard days of testimony about Manaforts finances and what prosecutors say was a yearslong taxevasion and fraud schemeManafort decided not to put on any witnesses or testify himself in the trial His attorneys said he made the decision because he didnt believe the government had met its burden of proof Manaforts defence team has attempted to make the case about the credibility of longtime Manafort protege Rick Gates who served as the governments star witness They have attacked him as a liar embezzler and instigator of any crimes as they try to persuade jurors that Manafort didnt willfully violate the lawFor the prosecution Gates was the star witness spending three days before the jury telling them how he committed crimes alongside Manafort for years Gates admitted to doctoring documents falsifying information and creating fake loans to lower his former bosss tax bill He also admitted to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars without Manaforts knowledge by filing fake expense reports But the governments case wasnt all about Gates Prosecutors spent two weeks presenting a meticulous documentbased case before the jury as they sought to prove Manafort used offshore bank accounts to conceal millions of dollars in proceeds from his Ukrainian political consulting from the IRS and later turned to defrauding banks Overall prosecutors say Manafort avoided paying more than USD 16 million in taxes over several yearsThey called carpenters landscapers and clothiers to attest to how Manafort paid for his lavish lifestyle of expensive suits and elaborate properties through offshore wire transfers from shell companies in Cyprus and elsewhere They also brought in bankers and accountants to tell jurors how when Manaforts foreign consulting income dropped off he turned to obtaining millions of dollars more in bank loans under false pretensesAnd perhaps most importantly the government read from Manaforts own emails as they laid out their case including messages where he personally directed withdrawals from the offshore accounts he never reported on his tax returns Some of other emails admitted into evidence in the case revealed Manaforts lobbying of Trump soninlaw Jared Kushner on behalf of Stephen Calk the chairman of Federal Savings Bank Prosecutors say Calk approved USD 16 million in loans for Manafort despite several red flags because Calk wanted a job in the Trump administrationThe emails showed that in the weeks after the 2016 election Manafort urged Kushner to consider Calk for Secretary of the Army a position Calk had put at the top of his list in an earlier email to Manafort Calk also listed seven other senior domestic appointments and 18 ambassadorships ranked in order of preference that he would accept Kushner respond to Manaforts email by saying On it But Calk ultimately did not get an administration postThe trial in Alexandria Virginia is the first of two for Manafort He faces a trial later this year in the District of Columbia on charges of conspiracy against the United States conspiracy to launder money making false statements and acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Ukrainian interests He is also accused of witness tampering in that caseCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the 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