Paul Manafort arrives for a hearing at US District Court on June 15, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP) (Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images) Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort leaves Federal Court on December 11, 2017 in Washington, DC. In October, Trump's one-time campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates were arrested on money laundering and tax-related charges. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Paul Manafort, advisor to Donald Trump, is seen on the floor of the Quicken Loans Arena at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, July 19, 2016. CLEVELAND, OH - JULY 17: Paul Manafort, campaign manager for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, is interviewed on the floor of the Republican National Convention at the Quicken Loans Arena July 17, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio. The Republican National Convention begins tomorrow. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) Paul Manafort arrives for a hearing at US District Court on June 15, 2018 in Washington, DC. - Manafort faces charges including conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy against the United States. Manafort was the first to be indicted by Special Counsel Robert Muller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Today's hearing includes Manafort's arraignment on new charges concerning attempts to tamper with potential witnesses via an encrypted messaging platform. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images) (CNN) — A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, granted the request Monday for five witnesses to testify with immunity in the criminal trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, the first trial in the Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. US District Judge T.S. Ellis also delayed the start of the trial, originally scheduled for Wednesday, to July 31. Ellis will begin meeting jurors this week as scheduled. When jury selection begins, one question potential jurors will not be asked is how they voted in the 2016 presidential election. “Of course people can be fair and impartial no matter who they voted for,” Ellis said. The jury will consist of 16 people, including four alternates. The five witnesses granted immunity are: James Brennan, Donna Duggan, Conor O’Brien, Cindy Laporta and Dennis Raico. Court filings do not provide details as to what each will be testifying about. Manafort in court A large portion of Monday’s hearing was dedicated to discussing a “data dump” of tens of thousands of pages of documents over the past month by the government. Manafort appeared in person at Monday’s hearing, wearing a green jumpsuit with a rumpled collar. Attorneys for Manafort said that they needed more time to review some 120,000 pages of documents, including documents and images taken from electronic devices belonging to Manafort’s former business partner Rick Gates, that were “at the heart of the issue” in the case. Prosecutors pushed back and said most of the documents were actually images and notes from Gates’ devices – not emails. Mueller’s team has four “phones or iPads” and one laptop belonging to Gates, who pleaded guilty earlier this year and has been cooperating with the investigation. He is expected to be a key witness in Mueller’s case. “I’m just not sure what looking at pictures is going to do for their case,” said Uzo Asonye, a prosecutor working with Mueller’s team. “The fact that you’re not using something does not mean it’s not usable by the defense,” Ellis responded. Role of politics in trial The contours of Manafort’s upcoming trial became clearer as Ellis weighed in on what arguments could be made before jurors and what type of information could be presented. Ellis said he’ll allow prosecutors to mention Manafort’s role on the Trump campaign, but only as it relates to a banker who allegedly sought to secure a role on the campaign in exchange for loans. “We’ll try to do it in a discrete way,” said Greg Andres, one of Mueller’s prosecutors. Manafort’s lawyers also sought to prevent prosecutors from talking about alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Prosecutors said they never planned to bring this up. In response, Ellis denied Manafort’s motion as moot. “I don’t anticipate that a government witness will utter the word ‘Russia,” Andres said. Manafort’s lawyers said they did not plan on arguing at trial that Manafort was the victim of a political prosecution or that he was “selectively” or “vindictively” prosecuted. There was also a dispute over whether Manafort’s legal team could make arguments to the jury about Mueller’s “motive” in bringing charges in this case. Ellis made it clear that he generally believes that prosecutors’ motives are not relevant at trial, but said Manafort’s lawyers could approach him during the trial, to make the argument in its “then-living color” as it comes up. During a discussion about Manafort’s work in Ukraine, Ellis, who often peppers his hearings with colorful asides, went on a tangent about Russian history and his own family’s story. He said his mother’s family grew up in a shtetl, or a Jewish community, in a part of Russia that saw its borders change repeatedly. Ellis said his family’s story taught him that many Americans have “antipathy” toward Russia and might not even know the difference between Russia and Ukraine. Ellis even mentioned Russia’s controversial annexation of Crimea, a territory of Ukraine. “They populated the Balkans, they populated the Baltics,” Ellis said. “Now we see they populated Crimea with Russians.”<doc-sep>Five people have been granted immunity from prosecution in the upcoming criminal trial of the former campaign chairman of President Donald Trump. That former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, faces a series of federal charges in two different jurisdictions. He’s charged with conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the United States, failing to file financial disclosures for foreign bank accounts, failing to register as an agent of a foreign principal, and making false statements in Washington, D.C. However, he also faces lesser-publicized charges of bank and tax fraud in the Eastern District of Virginia. Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller alleges Manafort led a “lavish lifestyle” in the United States off of “hidden wealth” stashed in foreign countries — without paying U.S. taxes. Here are the five people who have immunity: Donna Duggan, James Brennan, Conor O’Brien, Cindy Laporta, and Dennis Raico. All five are said to be connected to financial institutions. Five witnesses given immunity in Manafort: Donna Duggan, James Brennan, Conor O’Brien, Cindy Laporta, Dennis Raico. All from financial institutions. — Rachel Weiner (@rachelweinerwp) July 23, 2018 The Dennis Raico to whom immunity has been granted may be the same Dennis Raico said to have been involved with a purported deal through Chicago’s Federal Savings Bank to loan $16 million to Manafort in return for the bank’s founder, Steve Calk, serving as an economic advisor to Trump. The Cindy Laporta to whom immunity has been granted appears to work as a Certified Public Accountant for KWC, an accounting firm with two locations in Virginia. A spokesman for the firm, Craig Browning, confirmed Monday evening to Law&Crime that Manafort was a “former client” for whom the firm “prepared individual and business income tax returns.” Browning went on to say that the firm has cooperated and “will continue to cooperate fully with the prosecution,” and that “current and former employees of the firm . . . may be called as witnesses” in the Manafort case. (Browning did not directly confirm that the Laporta named in court documents was the Laporta who works at KWC.) Law&Crime continues to seek to identify the others. The type of immunity said to have been offered is “use immunity.” JUST IN: After judge’s order, names of potential witnesses that could get “use immunity” in upcoming Manafort trial have been unsealed: -Dennis Raico -Cindy Laporta -Conor O’Brien -Donna Duggan -James Brennan — NBC News (@NBCNews) July 23, 2018 So-called “use immunity” protects the witnesses against a government attempt to “use” the witness’s testimony in any hypothetical subsequent prosecution against the witness. (This type of immunity basically is an attempt to prevent the witness from pleading the Fifth.) As the manual for U.S. Attorneys points out, it is different from “transactional immunity,” which is broader. Transactional immunity protects witnesses from being prosecuted for the underlying offense about which they may be called to testify. Here, the witnesses being offered immunity apparently don’t have that broad of a protection. They could be prosecuted if they did something illegal, but their words could not be used against them. The charges Manafort faces in the Eastern District of Virginia were scheduled to go to trial Wednesday; however, the case has been pushed back to the end of the month. [Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images.] [Editor’s note: this report has been updated.] Have a tip we should know? [email protected]<doc-sep>A federal judge has postponed from Wednesday until July 31 the start of the upcoming trial of President Donald Trump's former campaign chief Paul Manafort after Manafort's lawyers complained of having a vast amount of newly disclosed documents to sift through. Judge T.S. Ellis III also granted immunity to five potential witnesses for their testimony at that trial in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. The potential witnesses were identified as Dennis Raico, Cindy Laporta, Conor O'Brien, Donna Duggan and James Brennan. All five people appear to work at various financial institutions that have been linked to Manafort either in court filings or published reports. The determination of whether to call the witnesses to testify will be made by prosecutors during the trial. Prosecutors in the office of special counsel Robert Mueller had asked for so-called use immunity for the five witnesses, which would bar their testimony at Manafort's trial from being used against them in a criminal prosecution. Ellis' decision to grant them use immunity does not preclude the quintet from being charged on the basis of other evidence. Without immunity, Mueller's office had said, the witnesses would have refused to testify by invoking their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Raico is an employee of Federal Savings Bank, a Chicago-based institution. NBC News reported in February that federal investigators were probing whether Manafort had promised Stephen Calk, the president of Federal Savings Bank, a job in the Trump White House in exchange for $16 million in homes loans. Neither Raico nor any of the other four people granted use immunity by Ellis on Monday have been charged with a crime. Ellis, during a hearing Monday, heard arguments from Manafort's defense team on their request for the delay. Manafort's lawyers have argued that a postponement is warranted due to the need to sift through the voluminous amount of documents recently turned over by prosecutors to the defense team. Manafort also faces a separate criminal case in Washington, D.C., federal court where a trial on related charges currently is scheduled to begin in September. Both cases relate to consulting and lobbying work Manafort did on behalf of pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. Manafort had been confined to his home on a $10 million release bond until June, when prosecutors accused him of trying to tamper with potential witnesses against him. He has since been in jail.<doc-sep>
A U.S. federal judge in Virginia made public the identities of five witnesses granted immunity to testify in the trial of Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, as the trial stemming from the Russian probe is delayed until late July. Donna Duggan, James Brennan, Conor O'Brien, Cindy Laporta and Dennis Raico are the five witnesses, according to records unsealed by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis. The individuals granted immunity to testify against Manafort were all previously named in a lengthy 427-line item evidence list submitted to the Eastern District of Virginia on July 18 by special counsel Robert Mueller. Manafort's trial was originally scheduled to start on Wednesday, but Ellis granted an extension to July 31 after attorneys for Manafort argued Monday that they needed additional time to review the roughly 120,000 pages of documents and images taken from electronic devices belonging to Manafort's former business partner Rick Gates. Manafort has been charged with over 20 counts, including both tax and bank fraud, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and failure to register as a foreign agent between 2006 and 2015, according to court documents reviewed by Newsweek. Manafort has pleaded not guilty. The Mueller indictment alleges that Manafort made tens of millions of dollars as a political consultant and well-connected lobbyist while working on behalf of pro-Russian political operatives inside Ukraine. Manafort and Gates allegedly engaged in a scheme to hide the Ukrainian income from the United States by avoiding taxes and disguising the income as "loans" from an offshore corporate entity. The unsealed court documents do not provide any information on what the witnesses will testify about, but all five individuals revealed Monday were affiliated with Manafort's financial dealings. Dennis Raico, one of the five witnesses, was previously associated with Federal Savings Bank in Chicago. The bank provided Manafort with $16 million in loans after Manafort's ouster from the Trump campaign back in August 2016. NBC News reported in February 2018 that the Mueller investigation was looking into Steve Calk, the founder of Federal Savings Bank, to determine if Manafort promised the banker a White House position once Trump took office in exchange for the bank loans. Manafort faces an additional trial in Washington, D.C., later this year on similar charges. The Russia investigation has resulted in charges against dozens of people. Early this month, Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, announced an 11-count indictment against 12 Russian intelligence officers of the Main Intelligence Directorate, known as the GRU. The Russian nationals were accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.