Jurors in Paul Manafort trial to hear closing arguments

Dana Verkouteren | AP

This courtroom sketch depicts Rick Gates, right, answering questions by prosecutor Greg Andres as he testifies in the trial of Paul Manafort, seated second from left, at the Alexandria Federal Courthouse in Alexandria, Va., Monday, Aug. 6, 2018. 

The jury in the bank fraud and conspiracy trial of President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort could begin deliberating on the case as soon as Wednesday, as both prosecutors and defense attorneys are poised to deliver their closing arguments.

Presiding Judge T.S. Ellis, who has repeatedly urged attorneys in the criminal trial to maintain a fast pace and scrap evidence related to Manafort’s lavish lifestyle throughout court proceedings, also bluntly suggested that both teams of lawyers should keep their closing remarks brief.

Prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller and Manafort’s defense team have both signaled that they will need about two hours to deliver their closing arguments. “If you think you can hold a juror’s attention for two hours, you live on a different planet than I do,” Ellis said Friday, The Washington Post reported.

Ellis may have a point, said David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami. “Jurors don’t have the longest attention span,” especially in a “paper case” like this, Weinstein said. “At a certain point, the jurors begin to lose interest.”

The jury of six men and six women have already sat through 11 days of testimony from more than two dozen witnesses and viewed hundreds of financial documents presented by Mueller’s team.

Manafort, who was Trump’s top campaign official before resigning in August 2016, is accused of multiple counts of bank fraud, failing to register as a foreign agent, filing false tax returns and lying to authorities.

The charges focus on the millions of dollars Manafort earned as a consultant for the pro-Russian political party of ex-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Prosecutors allege Manafort, with assistance from his former partner, Rick Gates, stashed millions in overseas accounts, misled the government about his income and failed to report many of those foreign accounts.

They also allege Manafort committed bank fraud by lying to obtain huge loans after Yanukovych was ousted in 2014, which dried up Manafort’s income and strained his ability to maintain his lavish lifestyle.

If convicted, Manafort could be sentenced to as much as 30 years in prison for each count of the most serious charges.

Manafort has pleaded not guilty to all charges in the case, the first to be brought to trial from Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. His lawyers are likely to argue in their closing remarks that Manafort did not willfully break any finance laws and that the jury has not met its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt — “a very high standard” of evidence to prove, Weinstein noted.