I've been hearing "Y'all, it's comin'" for like a year now
In this case, you're likely to see it arrive in less than 3 weeks. The judge himself sees it possible for this trial to be over in less than 2 weeks' time at this rate.
Rick Gates must be one of the five people granted immunity to outright admit it in court.
Reporting is his lawyers will argue him down to probation and halving his time if he's good, leaving him with a possibly 3-7 years of prison; the plea bargain here is that the prosecution won't contest their appeal to the judges for it.
This is a pretty big step in the right direction.
Oh boy, this is gonna snowball hard.
It's already known that he flipped and pled guilty and accepted a plea deal to testify against Manafort. He is not one of the five granted immunity, since he's already admitted guilt and accepted that he will be punished, but lightly because of his cooperation and snitching. He has no need to seek immunity, he's already been caught and his crimes documented. He could've been a witness granted immunity from self-incrimination if he had reported to the FBI what Manafort was making him do rather than be caught and charged for multiple forms of fraud and tax evasion.
Also, the five who have been granted immunity are known:
James Brennan, Donna Duggan, Conor O'Brien, Cindy Laporta and Dennis Raico. Court filings do not provide details as to what each will be testifying about.
Cindy Laporta has testified that she went along with Manafort's orders to falsify his tax records because she feared confronting him. Being granted immunity would be pretty critical to preserve her freedom and career while she testifies to having participated in filing fraudulent tax forms.
Cindy Laporta is now testifying that she was involved the falsification of documents to help Paul Manafort obtain loans.
First, she said that although documents from Manafort’s bookkeeper showed that a property he owned in Lower Manhattan was being used as a rental in 2015 — he made $116,000 in income while also claiming depreciation — she told an employee of Citizens Bank it was a second home because Manafort could “get a better rate” on a loan that way.
Next, she testified that the same bank employee, David Fallarino, said Manafort needed more “liquidity” to qualify for a loan.
“The bank wanted to see more money available to pay back the loan,” she said.
So, she reached out to Gates, who told her a $1.5 million loan from Peranova Holdings in 2012 had been forgiven in 2015. She told that to Fallarino, who asked for “color” — ie, documentation.
Asked who directed her to say the loan was forgiven, she said “Mr. Manafort or Mr. Gates.” She relied on “their word,” she said.
Given her experience with the Telmar loan, prosecutor Uzo Asonye asked, did Laporta believe the loan had really been forgiven in 2015?
“Uh… no,” she replied.
So we get five lower-level people with immunity and flipple Rick.
We haven't even gotten to the witness tampering yet
I wonder if all that money that Gates embezzeled was from Manafort. If so, that's freakin' hilarious. I hope Manafort found out about it when he said it in court.
That's exactly what happened and, yeah, from appearances it was the first time Manafort had heard about it.
That kind of thing is when murder happens.
Only if you know that murder will get you that money back or that they don't have a 'deadman's switch' of compromising info on you out there in the world.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/rick-gates-says-he-lied-for-years-at-manaforts-request-and-stole-from-him-in-the-process/2018/08/06/898df9ce-99b0-11e8-8d5e-c6c594024954_story.html
Gates said that even while he was committing crimes with his boss, he was also stealing from him. He testified that he had control over some of the Cyprus-based bank accounts that held Manafort’s money and that he created phony bills to siphon off hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“I added money to expense reports and created expense reports” that were not accurate, Gates said, to pad his salary by “several hundred thousand” dollars.
That testimony could explain one of the minor mysteries of the first week of the trial. As employees of various stores and service providers told the court last week about Manafort’s spending millions of dollars on suits, home entertainment systems and cars, some of the witnesses were shown phony invoices from those firms. The witnesses said they had never seen the fake bills before.
Poor Paul got double bamboozled.
"Well uh... its his word against my client'!"
"oh and I have the text right here..."
"shite"
A person you're conspiring to commit legal acts with does so against you? Is nothing sacred anymore?
That testimony could explain one of the minor mysteries of the first week of the trial. As employees of various stores and service providers told the court last week about Manafort’s spending millions of dollars on suits, home entertainment systems and cars, some of the witnesses were shown phony invoices from those firms. The witnesses said they had never seen the fake bills before.
I love that the prosecution is using foreshadowing as if their case is a fucking Netflix show
House of Tards started slow but season 2 is looking like it's a real ride.
Yeah well this time your ass better put on a condom because it's fuckin' coming
You can't make this shit up even if you tried.
I wish this was Netflix so we could binge watch the trials of everyone involved.
And, you know, it wouldn't have an effect on the real world.
I don't know who did this courtroom sketch, but I love some of the expressions in it. Really, just a masterpiece.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/226032/ed0c1596-36f3-41b0-8c8d-8c9ca16e4b53/firefox_2018-08-07_10-03-19.png
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/226032/d9511b64-8415-458d-9a5c-28245dac18bc/firefox_2018-08-07_10-03-15.png
Some new info from the continuing court case:
https://www.nbcnews.com/card/gates-said-manafort-s-income-stream-substantially-decreased-after-yanukovych-n898336
To summarize, in somewhat chronological order, this is what Gates testified today:
Manafort was paid by Ukranian oligarchs for consultancy work; the prosecution brought forward 11 accounts and Gates testified each of those was owned by a Ukranian oligarch. Manafort loaned himself money between two of those accounts because he was trying to decrease his taxable income; those 'loans' were actually income.
Manafort was paid by Ukranian shelf companies ($1 million every quarter for 2 years) who paid into his own Cypriot account and which were paid, in turn, by even further shelf companies - those companies regularly backdating their documents.
When Yanukovych left power, Gates testifies Manafort's income stream dropped; he was having trouble paying his bills.
Unhappy with his 2014 taxes, Manafort tasked Gates with working with Manafort's accountant to reduce his burden - he admits he falsified documents by stating Manafort's income as debt - saving Manafort $500k in taxes.
In 2015 Gates doctored his books again to qualify Manafort for a loan because he was in an even worse financial situation than 2014. The reason? He had no clients.
In 2016 they went gangbusters and doctored Manafort's income to hide a whopping $4.2 million - again, to help him secure another loan. This time, however, Manafort altered the document himself. So basically Gates under-reported, Manafort wanted it even further under-reported, inflated the number grandly, and then sent it back to Gates. He still had no clients.
In 2017, while on the campaign (after agreeing to work for Trump for no money despite having zero clients, constantly fraudulently filing for loans to soak up his debts, and being reached out to by Russia if we're to believe IC reporting) he promised a Chicago banker a job in the White House in return for $16m in home loans. That banker has been retained and has been given immunity.
If in 2017 he brought that offer to Trump then Trump and his campaign, even if they barely pursued it, are now ensnared directly into Manafort's frauds - even disregarding whether he was compromised by Russia to work in the Trump admin for them by their promising to forgive some of his loans in exchange 'for access'.
I'd hate to be Manafort right now, holy shit.
Paulie's probably regretting not taking a plea deal.
His defense team strategy was to use Gates as the fall guy for the fraud as well, which totally fell through
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/229156/e10cfbec-0bda-4f1a-b035-78cb06c6a9c2/image.png
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