LEGAL/PAUL MANAFORT/ROBERT MUELLER/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Prosecutors urged jurors in the trial of Paul Manafort to focus on financial records and Manafort’s ‘lies’ — and to set aside personal feelings about a tainted star witness — as the government offered its closing argument on Wednesday [8-15-18]. Pushing back, lawyers for the former Trump campaign chairman argued that the case brought by special counsel Robert Mueller is a mishmash of ‘selective’ evidence that doesn’t amount to any crime at all. Those competing positions, made in Alexandria, Virginia, federal court during a daylong session, will soon give way to jury deliberations in the first case brought by Mueller’s Russia investigative squad to reach trial. Mueller’s team went first with its final statements, with prosecutor Greg Andres spending more than 15 minutes delivering his case to the jurors before even naming Manafort’s longtime deputy Rick Gates, widely perceived as the government’s star witness. But Andres made clear the government believed it could secure a guilty verdict even without Gates’ testimony.”
–Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein and Darren Samuelsohn, “Manafort trial Day 12: Prosecution hammers Manafort’s ‘lies,’ defense chides ‘selective’ evidence,” Politico, August 15, 2018 8:40 am