The questioning of Paul Manafort’s protege was confrontational and personal — Mr. Manafort’s lawyer hammered Rick Gates about his own crimes, an extramarital affair and a guilty plea with prosecutors that may spare him severe punishment.
Mr. Gates, who faced a bruising cross-examination, returned to the witness stand on Wednesday for additional questioning from a Manafort lawyer who accused the government’s star witness of being immersed in “so many lies” that he can’t even remember them all and who demanded to know how a jury could possibly trust him.
Lawyers for Mr. Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, are determined to impugn the credibility of Mr. Gates. Defense attorney Kevin Downing began his cross-examination of Mr. Gates by confronting him on his own lies to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators, getting him to admit to an affair and pressing him about hundreds of thousands of dollars he admitted to embezzling from his former boss.
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The questioning was aimed at shifting blame from Mr. Manafort onto Mr. Gates, who pleaded guilty in Mr. Mueller’s investigation and agreed to cooperate with investigators by testifying in the financial fraud trial. “After all the lies you’ve told and the fraud you’ve committed, you expect this jury to believe you?” Mr. Downing asked incredulously.
Mr. Gates said he did, but the defence lawyer wasn’t satisfied. He scoffed at the idea that Mr. Gates had repented for his actions, noting that prosecutors have said they won’t oppose his bid for probation and getting him to acknowledge he had not repaid the money he had taken from Mr. Manafort.
The grilling got more intense on Tuesday when Mr. Downing pressed Mr. Gates about a “secret life” he said was funded by embezzlement, including an extramarital affair that Mr. Gates himself acknowledged.
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