Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort made more than $60 million as a political consultant in Ukraine, federal prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller said Monday — approximately 24 hours before Manafort’s trial is set to begin.
Manafort made more than $60 million during his Ukraine work, and “failed to report a significant percentage of it on his tax returns,” lawyers for Mueller wrote in a Monday court filing.
Jury selection begins Tuesday in Manafort’s bank and tax fraud trial in Alexandria, Va.
Last week, Manafort’s defense team asked the judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, to bar jurors from seeing more than 50 pieces of evidence the federal government said it may introduce at trial.
The cache of documents includes emails and memos that Mueller’s team says “prove the precise manner in which Manafort worked in Ukraine.”
Manafort worked during the 2010 presidential election and 2012 parliamentary elections in Ukraine, as well as local elections.
The emails and memos also show “that he did political consulting and lobbying work for Victor Yanukovych, the President of Ukraine, that was not tethered to any particular election,” said Mueller’s team on Monday.
“Further, the documents establish the breadth of the work that Manafort performed, including commissioning television ads, writing speeches, and carrying on campaign-related activities — the very issues covered in the memos,” says the court filing. “There is nothing prejudicial about documents setting forth how the ads were made, how consultants were paid, and who approved their work.”
According to Mueller’s prosecutors, the emails and memos have evidence that shows the “identity of Manafort’s sources of income in Ukraine, and in particular the oligarchs who instituted the practice of paying Manafort via foreign accounts.”
Federal prosecutors say their witnesses will testify about the nature of Manafort’s Ukraine work and how he was paid, arguing it would be “fundamentally unfair to permit Manafort to keep such corroborative evidence from the jury.”
Manafort’s trial is the first stemming from Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible connection to the Trump campaign. It is expected to last two to three weeks, with Manafort’s second trial in September in Washington.
Federal prosecutors have said they do not intend to ask questions about collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in the Virginia case.
Manafort was indicted in Alexandria in February, along with his associate Richard Gates. Gates, who is expected to testify in the trial, took a plea deal with Mueller.
Manafort was taken into custody in June for violating the terms of his bail in Washington by attempting to contact witnesses, but is expected to be in the Alexandria courthouse for his trial.
