UPDATE 2: Exhibits here.
UPDATE: Court wrapped up just before 5pm ET Wednesday.
After jurors left, prosecutor Greg Andres said that two more vendors will testify tomorrow — Joel Maxwell and Michael Regolizio — followed by Manafort’s bookkeepers and tax accountants.
Proceedings resume 9:30am ET Thursday.
Here's what happened Wednesday afternoon, courtesy of The Washington Post:
Judge Ellis put a hold on prosecutors showing pictures of Manafort's luxury suits.
Judge T.S. Ellis III expressed continued displeasure with the prosecution’s desire to enter detailed evidence about the items Paul Manafort purchased with money routed from offshore bank accounts.
Ellis deferred on ruling whether prosecutors may enter photos of luxury suits found in Manafort’s condo until later in the trial, indicating he wants to better understand whether the pictures are necessary to prove they were purchased with income hidden in foreign bank accounts.
Prosecutors said Rick Gates may or may not testify.
“He may testify, he may not,” [Assistant U.S. Attorney Uzo] Asonye said of Gates. “We’re trying to shorten the trial.”
The prosecutor said that was not because of anything particular to Gates; every witness, he said, might not be necessary depending on how the evidence unfolds. Ellis said it was news to him and obviously many others.
Manafort's custom suit maker testifies.
Paul Manafort was one of only about 40 clients of Alan Couture, a “luxury menswear boutique” in Midtown Manhattan, 29-year-old Maximillian Katzman testified Wednesday just after the lunch break.
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Katzman testified that Manafort was one of the store’s top five customers ... [and] ... he paid in unusual ways.
Unlike most customers who paid by check, Katzman testified, Manafort paid by wire transfers from foreign bank accounts. He was the only of the store’s customers to do so, Katzman testified.
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Manafort spent more than $929,000 on luxury menswear during the five-year period [between 2010 and 2014], paid for from foreign bank accounts.
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Katzman testified that Manafort’s payments came from accounts under the name Yiakora Ventures Limited and Global Highway Limited, both Cyrpus-based accounts prosecutors will argue were controlled by Manafort.
The next witness also testified to Manafort's unusual method of payment for expensive clothing.
House of Bijan in Beverly Hills bills itself as “the world’s most expensive store.” Ronald Wall, its chief financial officer and prosecutors’ fourth witness Wednesday, took the stand to testify that Paul Manafort was a top client of the luxury clothier.
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Like the previous witness, Wall said many customers paid with credit cards, checks and sometimes cash, but it was unusual for a client to pay with wire transfers, as Manafort regularly did at House of Bijan.
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Between 2010 and 2012, Wall told the jury that Manafort spent more than $334,000 at the luxury menswear store. He then walked the jury through documents showing that the invoices were paid from Cyprus-based bank accounts held by Global Highway Limited, Yiakora Ventures Limited and Lucicle Consultants.
The government says it may finish up sooner than expected.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Uzo Asonye told Judge T.S. Ellis III following an afternoon break that the prosecution is ahead of schedule and could rest its case next week.
That timeline means the trial would end sooner than the three weeks prosecutors had initially said they thought it would last.
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Ellis has been pushing prosecutors to speed up their case and has expressed annoyance about the volume of evidence they have attempted to introduce at various points. His court district, the Eastern District of Virginia, has a reputation for pushing cases through quickly, earning it the nickname “Rocket Docket” among D.C.-area lawyers.
Manafort and his family also used wire transfers to pay for vehicles - three purchases and a lease in 2012.
Prosecutors’ fifth witness Wednesday, and sixth overall, was Daniel Opsut, a salesman at Mercedes Benz of Alexandria.
Opsut testified that Kathleen Manafort, Paul Manafort’s wife, paid for a new SL550 in 2012 with a wire transfer from Lucicle Consultants Ltd, one of the Cypriot shell companies prosecutors say Manafort used to hide his Ukrainian income ...
Manafort's neighbor and real estate agent - Wayne Holland - took the stand to testify as to how Manafort's daughter Andrea bought her Arlington, Virginia home.
Holland read an email aloud to the jury from Paul Manafort that indicated he would be paying for the $1.9 million home through a wire transfer from Lucicle Consultants, which jurors learned earlier was a Cyprus-based bank account. Holland told the jury that he has never met Manafort’s business partner Rick Gates, and Gates played no role in the transaction. That is important because defense attorneys have sought to cast the blame for Manafort’s alleged misdeeds on Gates.
The word "Trump" comes up for the first time as contractor Stephen Jacobsen takes the stand and explains how Manafort paid for home renovations.
Between 2010 and 2014, Jacobsen testified he did work on Manafort’s Trump Tower property, a home in Brooklyn and a house Manafort had built for his wife’s younger brother. One of Jacobsen’s big projects was on Manafort’s home in Bridgehampton, N.Y., which is the Hamptons area ...
Jacobsen testified that the projects were paid for by wire transfers from Cyprus, including from a Manafort-controlled entity called Global Highway Limited.
Design and construction firm owner Doug DeLuca was the last witness of the day.
DeLuca testified that his company was hired in 2012 to design and build “an outdoor concept” at the Arlington home of Andrea Manafort, Paul Manafort’s older daughter.
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DeLuca explained that Paul Manafort was his primary contact for the project. He read aloud an email from Manafort, in which Manafort told DeLuca he would deal with Andrea Manafort on design but with him on the contract and budgeting.
DeLuca testified the more than $100,000 in bills was all paid by Lucicle Consultants, which jurors have previously heard is a foreign account.
The Washington Post is updating developments live for Day Two of the Paul Manafort trial. It also has a new Who's Who to help keep all the players straight.
Judge Ellis brings up an issue about terminology before proceedings get underway.
Before testimony began Wednesday, Judge T.S. Ellis III told prosecutors he was concerned repeated descriptions of Manafort’s Ukraine financiers as “oligarchs” would bias the jury.
“An oligarch is just a despotic power exercised by a privileged few,” Ellis said. “What I want to avoid … is somehow to use the term to mean he was consorting or paid by people who were criminals — there will be no evidence of that.”
Prosecutor Greg Andres protested that the people funding Manafort’s work in Ukraine are commonly referred to there as oligarchs. Political consultant Tad Devine described one such man, Rinat Akhmetov, as an oligarch in his testimony Tuesday.
A new profile of Judge Ellis describes him as a smart and demanding jurist.
With degrees from Princeton, Harvard and Oxford and 31 years on the bench, Ellis is formidably sharp. And although he might scold prosecutors for not meeting his high standards, in trials Ellis often uses his intellect to their benefit.
“It’s important for him that everyone in the courtroom knows he is the smartest person in that courtroom, and just be aware that he usually is,” defense lawyer John Zwerling says he warns lawyers who are new to the District. “So you better be on your A game.”
The government calls its first witness of the day just after 10am ET. It's Daniel Rabin.
[Rabin is] a political consultant who worked with Paul Manafort in Ukraine. Rabin – through his firm, Rabin Strasberg, worked with Manafort during several elections there, and Manafort’s firm paid Rabin’s about $350,000 in 2012 for its work.
The two men’s names come up in proposed trial exhibits from 2010 to 2014, in discussions of campaign ads and a video commemorating the UEFA Euro 2012 soccer championship.
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Prosecutors seem to be providing jurors a broad outline of Manafort’s work in Ukraine. That is important because, according to prosecutors, it was working there that helped make Manafort rich, and it was that money on which Manafort failed to pay taxes.
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[Prosecutor Greg] Andres appeared to try to establish that Manafort was a detail-oriented boss who was clearly in charge of his team.
This will be important later, as the defense team has made clear that they intend to argue that Manafort left certain key responsibilities to his associate, Rick Gates.The defense has sought to point the finger at Gates for the fraud and even accused Manafort’s former business partner of embezzlement.
Next up, the jury heard details of the FBI's search of Manafort's home.
An FBI special agent testified that when a team searched Paul Manafort’s Alexandria condominium last August, they knocked three times and then entered with a key.
They did not have a “no-knock” search warrant allowing them to simply bust into the unit and did not pick the lock, Agent Matthew Mikuska testified.
As the government starts introducing documents detailing home improvements Manafort allegedly paid for with his foreign consulting money, Judge Ellis questions the relevance of such paperwork.
Ellis has signaled some displeasure with the prosecution’s case Wednesday, grousing that it is “gilding the lily” by regularly referring to Manafort’s lavish spending and complaining about the pace. He has interrupted prosecutors on occasion to speed up their questioning and bluntly questioned them at other moments.
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[After some consideration], Judge T.S. Ellis III [rules] that prosecutors cannot enter an invoice for proposed home renovations, saying “All this document shows is that Mr. Manafort had a lavish lifestyle, he had a nice home with a pool and a gazebo — it’s not relevant.”
He also expressed concern about showing the jury photos of Manafort’s expensive suits, although prosecutors said it was necessary to prove the defendant bought and kept those items.
“To parade all of this again seems to me unnecessary,” he said.
The judge’s skepticism could be troublesome for prosecutors, who are trying to present the case that Manafort lived a life of luxury but paid no taxes on money he earned.
‘He has torn my head off’: Manafort judge known for being tough during trials (WaPo)