Manafort trial excerpts, are Soros & Koch
players here?
Gates has repeatedly said that he committed the majority of his crimes at Manafort’s direction. Off the top of his head, he named 12 overseas companies he said Manafort controlled; on prompting from prosecutors, he identified three more. “Yes,” they all belonged to Manafort he said. The money in them “came from income from political consulting in Ukraine,” he said.
“Two directors from a legal firm” in Cyprus set up the majority of the accounts, he said, and he or Manafort would contact them about wiring money.
After court, Andres said he had to have Gates explain their financial motivations because Ellis had interjected and called their spending “political contributions.”
“These people are not like any Americans,” Andres said, after Ellis for the second time invoked the
Koch brothers and George Soros
for comparison.
“These people are oligarchs, and that means they control a segment of the economy based on the government’s allowing them to do that,” Andres said.
Ellis cut in, laughing: “That makes it even clearer to me that it doesn’t have anything to do with the allegations in this case,” he said. “It throws dirt on these people. They may deserve it; I don’t know and I don’t care.” It’s irrelevant, the judge added, to whether Manafort reported and paid taxes on the money they paid him.
Andres said that “respectfully,” he disagreed.
Why bring up Soros & Koch in trial?
Is someone subtly inferring these two fund operatives via "Shelf Shell" companies?
https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/08/06/paul-manafort-trial-day-5-live-updates/?utm_term=.d59a39970b2f