Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, had $16.5m in unreported taxable business income between 2010 and 2014, an IRS agent testified on Wednesday.
For all those trying to spin the meaning of Judge Ellis’s temperament he did apologize however left-handedly to the prosecution for remarks yesterday regarding an expert IRS witness.
Prosecutors are now trying to refocus attention on Manfort’s financial crimes, after the attempts by the defense to discredit a key witness, Rick Gates, his business partner and deputy Trump campaign chair.
More interesting is any over/under speculation on whether Manafort will flip considering he has a second trial coming.
With their first witness of the day, prosecutors have sought to detail how Paul Manafort allegedly defrauded Citizens Bank – obtaining a $3.4 million loan in part by falsely claiming a property he owned in New York was a second residence, rather than a rental property.
Melinda James, who worked at the bank, testified that all the applications Mr Manafort submitted indicated his property on 29 Howard St. was a second residence, her research indicated otherwise. She said that as she was processing the loan, she went to a website called StreetEasy to confirm the address.
“It was listed for rent,” Ms James testified.
[...]
Darin Evenson, who runs “customer experience” at Airbnb, has testified that from January 2015 through April 2016 Paul Manafort’s condo on Howard Street in Manhattan’s SoHo district was almost always available to rent through the website. That is despite it being labelled as a "second home".
Mr Evenson testified that the loft was available for 1,125 nights in a row, the maximum number allowed on Airbnb.
[...]
So, having waited for proceedings to open - Judge TS Ellis started with an apology. Well kind of.
Judge Ellis has been very outspoken during the trial, with has included several run-ins with the prosecution. One on Wednesday involved the judge admonishing counsel over an expert witness.
“I was critical of counsel for … allowing an expert to remain in the courtroom,” he said before testimony began. “You may put that aside… I may well have been wrong.”
On Wednesday, Judge Ellis scolded prosecutors for calling an IRS expert who has sat through the trial in the gallery. Prosecutors filed a motion Thursday morning pointing out that the transcript backed up their understanding that Ellis had explicitly allowed the expert to do so.
“The Court’s reprimand of government counsel suggested to the jury—incorrectly—that the government had acted improperly and in contravention of Court rules,” prosecutors wrote. “This prejudice should be cured.”
Judge Ellis said Thursday that he had not actually read the transcript, which was attached to the government motion.
But, the judge said, “I was probably wrong.”
www.independent.co.uk/...
Even though his name has only come up once, nervous Trump fumes… note the “illegally b(r)ought”