Alexandria, Va. • The jury in the trial of President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort indicated Tuesday it is split on at least one count — sending a note asking the judge for instructions on how to proceed.
Around 11 a.m. of the panel's fourth day of deliberations, a note with a question came from the jury foreman, asking how jurors should fill out the verdict form "if we cannot come to a consensus on a single count," said U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis. The jury also asked what that would mean for the final verdict, Ellis said.
Though the meaning of the note wasn't entirely clear from its wording, the judge apparently took the panel's note to mean that they are stuck on a single count, not all of them.
Ellis said the note was "not an exceptional or unusual event in a jury trial," and he distributed to the lawyers an instruction he proposed giving to jurors.
He said he first planned to read his proposed instruction, though he would later likely asked jurors whether they had reached a unanimous decision on other counts, and, if so, where they stood on those.
The judge took a five-minute recess to let the lawyers consider his proposed instruction.
Manafort, who has worked on Republican presidential campaigns dating back to Gerald Ford, faces 18 bank fraud and tax charges. The trial in suburban Washington, D.C., began three weeks ago, and the jury began deliberating on Thursday.
After the panel went home for the night Monday, defense attorney Kevin Downing said outside the courthouse that his client was happy to see the jury continues to deliberate. "He thinks it was a very good day," said Downing.
Prosecutors charge that from 2010 to 2014, Manafort hid more than $15 million from the IRS — money he made as a political consultant in Ukraine.
When that income ended in 2014, authorities charge Manafort lied to banks to get millions of dollars more in loans to support his seven-figure lifestyle.
On Thursday, the jury asked Ellis to clarify some legal elements in the case that had been raised by the defense team. Since then, they have deliberated without asking for any further guidance from the judge.
Manafort, 69, could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted of the most serious charges in the case.
The trial is the first to emerge from the office of special counsel Robert Mueller.
The president has repeatedly spoken out publicly in support of Manafort, both at the outset of the trial and during jury deliberations.
On Monday morning, Trump tweeted that Mueller’s investigators “are enjoying ruining people’s lives and REFUSE to look at the real corruption on the Democrat side — the lies, the firings, the deleted Emails and soooo much more! Mueller’s Angry Dems are looking to impact the election. They are a National Disgrace!”