Manafort Trial Set to Begin in Virginia

Hannity on Fox News earlier this month. Paul Manafort, Who's who really is a nice man. You look at what's going on with him. It's like al capone two thousand and five tax case or a case that I guess very It's just a sad thing. It's a very sad thing for our country to say this. Joining us is Robert Mints, a former federal prosecutor and a partner in McCarter and English Bob. During a storm of tweets on Sunday,

Trump went on the offensive against Mueller personally. He said, in part, is Robert Mueller ever going to release his conflicts of interest with respect to President Trump, including the fact that we had a very nasty and contentious business relationship. The only thing we know, just a side note about the allegations, which Mueller has denied, is that at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, there was a dispute and fees according to Trump's people, but not according to Mueller's people.

So why this pre trial flutter, Well, it's hard to say exactly what's behind the motivations for going after Mueller at this point, although obviously there's been a steady drumbeat of criticism of the Special prosecutor, both by the President

and by his legal team. I think one thing we can say for sure is it Judge Ellis, who is the trial judge and will be hearing this case, has made clear to both prosecutors and the defense that he is not going to tolerate the injection of any political issues into this trial, and he's not going to allow lawyers to stray into areas that he believes could prejudice the jury. So, for example, he's told the defense that they cannot attack the motive of prosecutors for bringing this case.

He's admonished prosecutors not to tie this case to Russian collusion because it's really not about Russian collusion, and prosecutors in fact have said that they will barely mention the word Russia if they make it at all during this trial. Bob, given what you just said that that this case really isn't about Russia, can you put it in context with the rest of the Muller probe? What difference does this trial make for the purposes of that probe and for

Donald Trump. Uh, That's a great question, Greg, I mean, I think the answer is, first of all, that Manifort supporters what argue this case has absolutely nothing to do with Muller's inquiry, and in fact, they filed a motion with the court to dismiss the case that very basis, saying that the Special Prosecutor had exceeded his mandate in

bringing these charges. At the end of the day, this case is about money that Mr Mantafort hallogally earned in connection with work he had done over in politics in the Ukraine, and the government's cases that he failed to disclose many millions of dollars on his income taxes and then later committed bank fraud in connection with certain loans.

The value of the case to the Mueller investigation is whether or not they can ultimately put enough pressure on Mr Manafort to have him cooperate with them, because he did serve as the head of the Trump campaign during a key moment during the election, and there's no question that Mueller and his team believe that he's got valuable

information should they get him to agree to cooperate. Bob, we already know a lot about what the prosecutors are going to present, and they have thirty five witnesses, they have five exhibits. Do you see any holes in the prosecution's case that Manaforts attorneys might be able to use. Well. So far, Manaforts defense team has done more of a

job attacking the process rather than the substance of these allegations. So, as I mentioned a minute ago, they attacked prosecutors for overstepping their bounds by bringing this prosecution in the first place. But they've really not gone after the substance of this case. So it's a bit of an open question at this

point as to what their strategy will be. It would seem that this is a very well documented case based upon the evidence that we've seen so far that's been released in discovery, But obviously, at the end of the day, prosecutors are going to have to prove that Mr Manafort intended to evade his taxes and that he specifically lied to bank officials in in getting a loan uh These are specific intent crimes, and prosecutors are going to intend

to do that through these voluminous records and through the assistance of the testimony of Rick Gates, who was MANA for It's right hand man and who pled guilty last February and is now cooperating with the government against his former boss Bob. This is potentially one of two criminal trials against Manafort. There's another one in federal court in in d Cum. How would you compare the two cases? Is are they totally separate? Is this one address rehearsal

for the second one? How do they interact with each other? Well, there is a fair amount of overlap. This case, as I mentioned, is really about tax evasion and bank fraud. The Virginia case, which will start in September after this case is concluded UH involves um bank fraud as well, but also involves him failing to Manafort failing to file uh F bars, which are declaring money that he has earned overseas, and failing to identify himself as a far

An agent. So they are similar, but they're different. And one of the real questions is why Manaforts Team has elected to try these cases separately. Prosecutors had no choice but to bring certain charges into Virginia and certain charges in the District of Columbia. Typically, defense lawyers will want to consolidate those cases as they as they can uh in order to give the government only one shot at

their clients. Here we're seeing Manaforts Team allow the government to go after him twice, and there's a question as to why they're doing that that. That's always been my question, but I don't think we have any answers yet. Maybe we will later on. Thanks so much, Bob. As always, that's from our federal prosecutor. Robert Menzi is a partner

at McCarter in English. The Board of c v S will be meeting today to discuss the future of CEO Leslie Mounvez, who is accused of sexual harassment by six women. In a New Yorker article, author Ronan Pharaoh said at the women he interviewed reported a culture of harassment and retaliation at CBS. They also said that they were speaking out because they were afraid there was a broader culture of impunity across this company, which is something we heard

from dozens of people. In the article, Moonvest acknowledge there were times decades ago when he may have made some women uncomfortable by making advances, but said he never used his position to harm anyone's career, joining us as Debora Cats founding partner at Cats, Marshall and Banks Debora. It seems that when there have been sexual harassment allegations made in the cases of other high profile men in the media, such as Charlie Rose Matt Lauer, they left their jobs

almost immediately after the news reports. So is it likely that the board will ask Moonvest to step down before a full investigation can be completed. Given these well documented allegations in the Pharaoh article, it would be inconceivable to me that the board would not ask him to step down. This is a publicly traded company. The allegations are serious. The allegations and retaliation show uh tremendous abuse of authority and power, and I can't see CBS doing anything other

than asking him to step down. If that's the case, what was the purpose of the statement that CBS is independent directors put out earlier saying that they plan to investigate and hire an outside law firm. Uh. Is that not an effort to buy a little time to to

to figure out exactly what's going on? Well? Perhaps, but you can imagine that if he gets fired and there's not an investigation that's independent that's conducted, UH, he has a massive amount of severance that he would be claiming in entitlement to the bottom line is that CBS needs to investigate this, and they need to understand how broad the behavior is, how many people were affected by it, how many people were aware of the behavior, and whether

Moonvest's conduct are really affected other divisions and the behavior of others, allowing situations like, for example, UH Charlie Rose and what we now know our serious allegations at UH in other divisions to take place. So Deborah Ronan Faraoh said, the women he interviewed reported a culture of harassment and retaliation at CBS. When the allegations are this old, how do you how do you know whether that culture is

continuing or not? And how do you investigate it? You investigated by UH speaking to people who have relevant information, companies that really want to get at the issue of culture and how pervasive harassment and fears of retaliation are actually can do things like conduct climate surveys and do focus groups, and once an independent investigator gets on board, there's gonna be a list of people who are the appropriate people to talk to and they will have that list.

There are pending EO C charges again CBS, UH, so those would be people to speak to. But typically investigators, in speaking to one woman who has been arasked, will say, speak to this other woman. And it goes on and on and on, and even though the allegations are old, the ones in the story, there are ones that were from the early two thousand's And my guess is uh,

the behavior uh continued, It typically doesn't end. UM. So the investigators have a lot of work to do, and they're not only looking at moonvess behavior, but what happened with the structure at CBS? What what what structurally is broken there that would not allow people to come forward with allegations for fear of retaliation, because that's what allows this broader culture of immunity. Can you speak to less? Moon was a public stance as a supporter of the

Me Too movement. UM is obviously these are still just allegations at this point. But if these allegations are true, is that just rank ypocrisy in his part? Well, we see this again and again. We see this with Eric Schneiderman. We saw this with Harvey Weinstein. What people's public stances is often quite different from their private behavior, and it's far worse than hypocrisy. In fact, it sometimes helps facilitate very predatory behavior when you're perceived as someone who's a

champion of women. So, Deborah, the legal battle with Sherry Redstone, who wants to merge CBS with Viacom, has been portrayed as this Moonvez versus Redstone. You know, how might that be affected by these by the allegations alone, Well, it seems to me that Redstone is in a much better position to say, as a majority shareholder, we are not keeping him in this position regardless of that ongoing legal battle.

Um move has has has violated the trust of the company and and shareholders, and she would certainly be within her rights to say enough is enough. And Deborah, what about the women who were allegedly harassed and abused? Do they have some legal recourse here? Are is everything going to be beyond the Statute of limitations. I think that

we don't know that yet. Certainly allegations from twenty years ago or beyond the statute of limitations, whether anyone has been affected within the relevant statute of limitations, we need to wait and see. But I do understand that there are pending e e o C charges and those would be those would the claims that can be pursued. I don't know who they're against. I just know that there are pending charges with the e o C. All right, just the start of this story. That's Debora Cats of Cats,

Marshall and Banks. Thanks Deborah, thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg Ye