LEGAL/PAUL MANAFORT/ROBERT MUELLER/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Prosecution questioning Wednesday [8-1-18] of the former manager of a luxury men’s clothing boutique Paul Manafort frequented, Alan Couture in New York, revealed an intriguing and mysterious development: someone apparently forged invoices from the store. Seeking to establish just how expensive Manafort’s tastes were, Manafort’s team got Maximillian Katzman—the store’s ex-manager and son of its owner—to certify that Manafort ran up bills of more than $900,000 between 2010 and 2014. Katzman said the boutique had only about 40 customers and Manafort ranked in the top five. Unlike other clients, Manafort didn’t pay the firm by check or credit card, but in funds wired from accounts abroad in the names of foreign businesses…Although many details about Manafort’s spending have been made public, prosecutor Greg Andres surprised many in the courtroom by posting an invoice on the TV monitors from ‘Alan Corture LLC.’ Asked about the bill, Katzman quickly indicated it was fake. ‘It’s off by a letter,’ he said. ‘The zip code is incorrect.’ Unlike the real invoices, the invoice Andres showed did not contain any direct reference to Manafort. Instead, it appeared to be intended to show direct billing to a company linked to Manafort, Global Endeavor LLC. That was one of the companies used to wire funds to pay Manafort’s bills.”
-Josh Gerstein and Darren Samuelsohn, “Manafort Trial Day 2: A fake bill, a banned word, and a Rick Gates surprise,” Politico, August 1, 2018 3:22 pm