After deliberating for some seven hours Thursday, the jury in the ongoing fraud trial of former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort submitted four clarification questions to U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III.
Those questions relate to four specific counts of the 18 overall Manafort was charged with, according to Politico.
The "reasonable doubt" question is a common question from jurors since that is the bar they are using to decide someone's guilt. Here's what Judge Ellis told them: "The government is not required to prove beyond 'all possible doubt,' just doubt that can be reasoned."
Ellis also provided an answer on the question related to an FBAR (foreign bank account report) by reading back jury instruction #53: "A person is an owner of record (Owner of FBAR) if a person is acting on behalf of a US person with access and control of the account, OR if a US person who owned more than 50% of company."
The question matters because the defense argued that prosecutors hadn’t proven Manafort had to file an FBAR on several of his overseas accounts, which were under the names of corporate entities in Cyprus. Instead, Manafort’s attorneys said his consulting firm should have filed the reports and that for three of the four charged years, he only owned 50 percent of the accounts while his wife owned the other half, per Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post.
Overall, the judge wasn't super helpful, telling the jury to instead rely on their collective notes and memories entirely for the other two questions.
The "shelf company" question relates to a term that former Manafort deputy Rick Gates used during testimony. It refers to a corporation specifically set up for someone else to take over that has an account with no recorded activity. During testimony, Gates was reportedly using the term and Judge Ellis actually interrupted the questioning to confirm that he was saying "shelf company."
Legal prognosticators tended to think the jurors’ questions figured well for the defense in some respects, especially the reasonable doubt question because the defense centered their entire argument around the idea that the prosecution hadn't proven the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
"It suggests some jurors are trying to convince a holdout," explained former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti, echoing an observation made by several other legal analysts.
But by and large, the questions seem to reflect the complexity of the case and the jurors’ attempts to grapple with the mountain of evidence with which they were presented—they actually requested a bigger deliberation room to help accommodate all the exhibits. As Politico noted:
Jurors also may have signaled that they feel a bit swamped by the nearly 400 exhibits from the two-week trial. They asked for an index linking those exhibits to individual counts in the indictment. He declined, telling them, again, to rely on their own recollection.
Also, remember that Judge Ellis read them the jury instructions, which took about two full hours, instead of providing them with a written copy. Some observers flagged that as problematic because it means jurors have to refer back to the audio whenever they are trying to recall the relevant law that should be guiding their deliberations.
But whatever their questions may mean for any one of the 18 criminal counts they are considering, keep this in mind: