Prosecutors rested their case against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort on Monday, after testimony from a bank official who said he didn’t feel comfortable with a loan his bank provided to Manafort in 2017, but felt he had no choice after the bank’s chairman had approved it.
On Friday, jurors had heard from a witness from the same bank, Federal Savings Bank, who described unease with $16 million in loans the bank provided to Manafort because the bank’s chief executive was interested in a job with the Trump administration.
Over the past 10 days, prosecutors have presented a series of more than 20 witnesses who described how Manafort earned some $60 million through political consulting work in Ukraine in the early 2010s, and used some of that income, stored in bank accounts in Cyprus, to pay for high-end clothing, landscaping and real estate.
Prosecutors alleged that Manafort didn’t report at least $16 million of that income to tax authorities. Witnesses have also described how Manafort was losing clients by 2014, and turned to U.S. banks for loans in 2015 and 2016, but allegedly provided inaccurate information in order to obtain millions of dollars in funds. Manafort’s team hasn’t yet said whether they plan to call any witnesses in support of his defense. If they decide not to present any additional evidence, both sides could begin two-hour closing arguments as early as Tuesday.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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