ALEXANDRIA, VA — Rick Gates continued his testimony against his former boss, Paul Manafort, Tuesday as prosecutors asked him to describe the mechanics of how they were paid for their Ukraine consulting work, as well as how that income flow began to dry up starting in 2014.
By July 2015, Manafort’s financial situation had “substantially decreased,” Gates testified on the sixth day of the trial here.
Manafort would go on to lead Trump’s campaign about a year later, a position for which he earned no salary.
Other witnesses in the government’s case have testified that Manafort continued to struggle to pay his bills into 2016.
The prosecutors allege that as a result of this situation, Manafort and Gates sought fraudulent bank loans.
Manafort is on trial facing bank and tax fraud charges. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.
According to Gates, the last election they worked on before Donald Trump’s was the parliamentary election of 2014 in Ukraine. By then, their top client, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, was no longer in power. They were working for a new party called the Opposition Bloc.
Manafort was not paid in full for that work, Gates testified. Only part of the bill was paid.
Prosecutors showed emails between Gates and Konstantin Kilimnik in August 2015 as they attempted to get payment from the Opposition Bloc party for the work.
“This is to calm Paul down,” Kilimnik said in one of the emails.
