As Rick Gates testified to a packed courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia, on Monday, he carefully avoided making eye contact with his former business partner and mentor, Paul Manafort.

But as Gates implicated himself and Manafort in multiple criminal acts, Manafort — who could spend the rest of his life in prison — fixed the cooperating witness with an icy glare.


It was the most dramatic moment yet in the criminal trial of Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman. Gates’ testimony, which is central to special counsel Robert Mueller’s bank and tax fraud case against Manafort, made vivid the rupture of a relationship that once involved exotic foreign travel and huge profits — but now pits Gates against his longtime boss in what one of their mutual acquaintances called a betrayal.

The two men, colleagues for a decade, hadn’t been seen in the same room since mid-February, shortly before Gates, whom Mueller also indicted, agreed to plead guilty and cooperate with the special counsel’s team. The reunion of sorts seemed to make Gates uncomfortable: The 46-year-old former lobbyist and consultant looked at just about everyone in the courtroom — the judge, the lawyers, the jury — other than the man he was incriminating.

Gates even referred to his longtime friend with cold distance, referring to him as “Mr. Manafort,” when he said that he took his boss’ “direction” when he filed several years of false tax returns and failed to notify the U.S. government that Manafort had foreign bank accounts.

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The split between Manafort and his former protégé has stunned many Republican lobbyists and political consultants.

“I don’t want to watch,” Michael Caputo, a Trump campaign veteran who has called both Manafort and Gates friends for decades, and who believes the charges to be unfair, said before Gates’ testimony. “It’s very unfortunate to see the two close friends at loggerheads over nothing.”

“They were very close,” added a second GOP consultant who knows both men well, saying that Manafort has grounds to feel “betrayed.”

The trial does not have direct implications for Trump and is not expected to shed light on whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. It is not known whether Gates, in addition to recounting Manafort’s alleged crimes, might also be telling Mueller’s team about misdeeds by other Trump associates or the president. Former Trump aides say that Gates was an influential figure in the Trump campaign and transition, and also visited the Trump White House in early 2017.

Gates entered the courtroom shortly after 4:15 p.m., clean-shaven and wearing a dark suit. After taking an oath with his hand on a Bible, he described meeting Manafort in 1995 at an office Christmas party at Manafort’s home while interning at the Republican operative’s lobbying firm.

Gates explained how he left the firm in 1997 but teamed up with Manafort again in 2006. They worked together for a decade, helping to elect the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. After Trump named Manafort his campaign chairman in the spring of 2016, Gates signed up as well, though he kept that reference vague, saying only that he had done “work for one of the presidential campaigns most recently.”

Despite their deep ties, and what others call a genuine friendship, Gates sought on Monday to portray his relationship with “Mr. Manafort” as strictly professional, testifying that he was merely an employee and thought that Manafort saw him the same way. Gates said he typically spoke several times a day with Manafort about everything from their political consulting work to his boss’ financial affairs.

But, prodded by prosecutors, he added: “Outside of business we didn’t socialize."

The charges against Manafort largely relate to lucrative work the men did in Ukraine several years ago, prior to when they joined Trump’s campaign. That work has drawn particular scrutiny because of Yanukovych’s ties to the Kremlin and because the men relied in Ukraine on the services of a translator and fixer named Konstantin Kilimnik, whom Manafort’s office has said has ties to Russian intelligence.

Questioned by Mueller prosecutor Greg Andres, Gates painted Manafort’s work in Ukraine in a positive light, explaining he’d help to build the country’s Party of Regions, which dominated Ukrainian politics for nearly a decade.

“It was kind of building a party 101,” Gates said.

Gates said Manafort’s consulting work for Yanukovych — which included political strategy and even tips on the Ukrainian’s personal appearance — was a major strategic triumph. “Mr. Manafort brought him back from the proverbial political dead,” Gates said. “He was probably one of the most politically brilliant strategists I’ve ever worked with.”

Gates has been at the center of the trial since it started last week. His name was mentioned hundreds of times before he finally took the stand on Monday, including by Manafort’s lawyers, who have built their long-shot defense of Manafort around destroying Gates’ credibility.

“You're going to see evidence of how Mr. Gates' story has evolved over time and how the government was eager to believe his evolving stories about Paul Manafort,” Thomas Zehnle, one of Manafort’s attorneys, said in his opening statement last week.

“You’re going to learn that Mr. Gates will tell untruths about Mr. Manafort and about anyone and anything in order to save himself from prison time, from huge criminal fines, to save himself from having to pay his back taxes, and all the penalties that are associated with those taxes that he owes because of his own personal misdeeds,” the Manafort attorney added.

Zehlne also accused Gates of embezzling “millions of dollars” from Manafort, without providing evidence, something Gates himself admitted Monday.

“In essence, I added money to expense reports and inflated expenses to receive the additional money,” Gates said. Asked to quantify the overcharges in dollars, Gates said: “I’d say it’s several hundred thousand.”

Veteran lawyers say Mueller’s team must establish Gates as a credible witness before Manafort’s lawyers cross-examine him, knowing full well the defense has telegraphed its plans to highlight the fact Gates was originally indicted for many of the same crimes as Manafort and has since admitted to lying to the FBI.

“He’s been on both sides of this,” said John Dean, the former White House counsel to Richard Nixon who himself flipped and testified against his former colleagues in the Watergate scandal. “The jury will understand that. His only route is just tell the truth.”

Andres signaled the Mueller prosecutors have about three more hours of questioning for Gates on Tuesday morning. “Then they hold their breath that Manafort doesn’t know something about Gates that Gates didn’t tell them,” said a lawyer who represents a client in the Russia investigation.