It’s been a wild week of testimony at the Washington, D.C. trial of Paul Manafort, with his former right-hand man, Rick Gates, at the center. As part of his plea deal, Gates first took the stand on Monday and testified that he and the one-time chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign set up offshore accounts in Cyprus to transfer money to the U.S. and committed bank and tax fraud. But as salacious as some of those details are, the person in this case who has started to raise the most eyebrows may be the judge, who has been sparring with attorneys on both sides throughout the trial.
Jim Braude was joined by former U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who served under Barack Obama and successfully prosecuted Dzokhar Tsarnaev and James Whitey Bulger among others, and attorney Bruce Singal, who worked alongside Robert Mueller in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston and was named 2017 Mass Lawyers Weekly's lawyer of the year.
