(Reuters) - The one juror who prevented a conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on all 18 criminal charges did not trust any of the witnesses and exasperated other members with her reasoning, a juror in the trial told Reuters. The comments from Paula Duncan, the only juror so far to speak out after Tuesday’s verdict in Alexandria Virginia, offered fresh insight into how the jury of six men and six women reached a consensus on 8 charges while deadlocking on the other 10 counts. The judge declared a mistrial on the 10 counts. Duncan, 54, a Trump supporter, told Reuters in a phone interview that she believed Manafort had been “targeted” and “harassed” by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team but that politics did not influence how she considered the evidence. She also said politics did not play a role with other jurors. Duncan said the other jurors were frustrated with the holdout, who prevented them from reaching a consensus to convict on seven of nine counts of bank fraud and three of four counts of failing to declare foreign bank accounts. “She was just saying I want to review my notes,” Duncan said. “When we asked her to explain her side she really couldn’t give us a good reason. She just said she had reasonable doubt.” Manafort was found guilty on all five tax fraud charges related to his tax returns from 2010 to 2014, which contain a box to check on the existence of foreign bank accounts. In addition to that check on the tax return, U.S. citizens with more than $10,000 in overseas accounts during a given year are required to submit a form called a foreign bank account report, or FBAR, detailing those accounts to the U.S. Treasury. Slideshow ( 4 images ) Duncan said there was no reason to have convicted Manafort on one FBAR count and not the other three. She said the holdout appeared to be willing to convict only for 2012 because there was a piece of evidence with Manafort’s name on it. “We didn’t understand her logic and to us if he was guilty on the tax documents he was pretty much guilty on the FBARs,” Duncan said. “It made sense to everyone but her.” The verdict was the first courtroom victory from Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election. Duncan said the documentary evidence was more than strong enough to overcome the testimony of Rick Gates, Manafort’s former right-hand man and the prosecution’s star witness, whose credibility withered under cross-examination. “The evidence and the paper trail was there regardless of what Rick Gates said,” Duncan said. Duncan, who graduated with a degree in environmental science and journalism from the University of Missouri in 1989, said she was planning to write a book about her experience. “I will probably touch on the counts but maybe focus more on being chosen to be a juror and the environment we are in right now,” she said.<doc-sep>In the end, it was one juror who saved Paul Manafort from being convicted on all 18 counts he faced, instead of just the eight counts related to his finances that he ended up with. Paula Duncan, a jury member and self-described Trump supporter, told Fox News Wednesday night that it was just one juror who held out on 10 of the counts. Duncan voted guilty on all 18 counts, saying that she considered the evidence against Manafort “overwhelming.” Duncan isn’t just a Republican who voted for her party’s nominee — she kept her pro-Trump gear in her car while driving to the trial every day and described special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt to try to find Russian collusion.” Duncan is the first juror of the 12-member panel to speak out publicly. Judge T.S. Ellis III kept the jurors’ names under seal to protect their safety, citing threats he had received during the high-profile trial. But Duncan said she didn’t feel threatened. “I’m an American. I’m a citizen. I feel I did my civic duty. I don’t think I need to hide behind anything. I am not afraid at all,” she said. She also said she thought it was the public’s right to know what happened. “America needed to know how close this was,” she explained. “And that the evidence was overwhelming. I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty, but he was. No one is above the law.” Paul Manafort juror Paula Duncan: "I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty, but he was and no one's above the law." @foxnewsnight https://t.co/IPeZ46t5Nj pic.twitter.com/0KPOlQ0e1Z — Fox News (@FoxNews) August 23, 2018 Duncan was clear that 11 of the 12 jury members believed Manafort was guilty on all 18 counts of subscribing to false income tax returns, failing to report his foreign accounts, and bank fraud and bank fraud conspiracy. She didn’t share many details about the holdout juror, other than that she is a woman. The juror refused to budge on 10 of those counts, forcing a mistrial on those charges and a partial conviction on the other eight. “We all tried to convince her to look at the paper trail,” Duncan said. “We laid it out in front of her again and again, and she still said that she had a reasonable doubt. That’s the way the jury worked. We didn’t want to be hung, so we tried for an extended period of time to convince her.” “But in the end,” Duncan said, “she held out, and that’s why we have 10 counts they did not get a verdict.” Duncan described the deliberations as both heated and emotional at times — “there were even tears.” And while Trump’s name came up, the jury tried to keep politics out of it. “I think we all went in there like we were supposed to and assumed that Mr. Manafort was innocent,” Duncan said. “We did due diligence. We apply the evidence, our notes, the witnesses, and we came up with the guilty verdict on the eight counts.” A juror’s perspective reveals the deep splits about the Mueller investigation Duncan’s interview with Fox News revealed the inner workings of a jury panel that spent almost four full days deliberating — punctuated by a few notes to the judge and one juror’s desire to get an early start on the weekend. Duncan expressed serious discomfort with the Mueller investigation and even suggested that Manafort probably wouldn’t have been charged unless the special counsel wasn’t after Trump. “I think they used Manafort to try to get the dirt on Trump — or hoping he would flip on Trump,” she said. Paul Manafort juror Paula Duncan: "I think that they used Manafort to try to get the dirt on Trump, or hoping that he would flip on Trump." @foxnewsnight https://t.co/IPeZ46buVL pic.twitter.com/f2EdbGJUrX — Fox News (@FoxNews) August 23, 2018 Duncan was critical of the Mueller team, saying she thought the prosecution seemed bored and were catnapping through the trial. She also said they tried to waste time with the “shenanigans” of Russian collusion at the start of the trial, until Judge Ellis intervened. (She also was somewhat critical of the defense, including Manafort’s decision not to testify.) Yet she and her fellow jurors were persuaded by the evidence — what she called the “paper trail.” Her discomfort with the Russia investigation didn’t prevent her, and possibly others with similar feelings, from examining the facts. This seems to be both good and bad news for the future of the Mueller investigation — and for President Donald Trump. Trump’s “RIGGED WITCH HUNT”/“Russia hoax”/“NO COLLUSION” campaign is definitely resonating among his supporters. But in Mueller’s first trial, that didn’t prevent at least a partial conviction in a case with strong evidence.<doc-sep>Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, would have been convicted on all 18 charges of financial fraud but for one holdout juror, who forced a mistrial on 10 counts, another member of the jury said on Wednesday. That juror, Paula Duncan, who described herself as a strong supporter of President Trump, said on Fox News that even though she believed the prosecutors had targeted Mr. Manafort in hopes of gaining information against Mr. Trump, the evidence against him “was overwhelming.” “I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty,” Ms. Duncan said, “but he was.” Mr. Manafort, 69, was convicted Tuesday of five charges of tax fraud, two charges of bank fraud and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account. Ms. Duncan said 10 members of the jury were solidly convinced of his guilt on the other 10 counts as well. An 11th juror wavered at points but was ultimately won over after the other jurors pointed out what Ms. Duncan called an extensive paper trail.<doc-sep>
A single juror prevented President Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort from being convicted this week on all 18 counts of tax evasion and bank fraud, according to fellow juror Paula Duncan, who offered insight into the four days of their deliberations. In a Fox News interview late Wednesday night, Duncan, a self-described Trump supporter, became the first from the panel to speak out since Manafort’s conviction Tuesday on eight of the fraud counts, with mistrials declared on the remaining 10. She said the holdout -- an unnamed female juror -- was stuck on reasonable doubt. "Reasonable doubt. The person, a female juror, was -- we all tried to convince her to look at the paper trail," Duncan said. "We laid it out in front of her again and again, and she still said that she had a reasonable doubt. "We didn't want to be hung so tried for an extended period of time to convince her. But in the end, she held out." Manafort is facing a maximum of 80 years behind bars but the sentence is likely to be less. The jury also agreed to throw out the testimony of the prosecution's star witness and Manafort's former business partner, Rick Gates. During his three-day testimony, Gates described his part in shielding millions of dollars in more than a dozen offshore accounts from United States tax collectors. Gates said he did so at Manafort's direction, Gates said, also admitted to embezzling "several hundred thousand" dollars from Manafort. Manafort's attorneys built their defense argument around Gates, painting him as the true culprit behind their client's crimes and asserting that Manafort's only mistake was "placing his trust in the wrong person," referring to Gates. In the jury room, “One of us had a problem with accepting his testimony because he took the plea and so we agreed to throw out his testimony and look at the paperwork, which his name was all over," Duncan said. When asked whether she found him to be a credible witness, Duncan added: "No I think he would have done anything that he could to preserve himself. That's just obvious in the fact that he flipped on Manafort." Gates pleaded guilty in February to charges of conspiracy against the United States and lying to federal authorities. Having initially been charged alongside Manafort, Gates has since cooperated with the special counsel as part of his investigation into Russian meddling during the 2016 campaign, telling the court during testimony that he has met with Mueller's team "about twenty" times. Gates has not yet been sentenced.