By a strange coincidence, the inner circle of Donald Trump—a billionaire with approximately zero taste for subtlety—seems to consist of those who share his penchant for authoritarian chic. Despite their newfound political toeholds, his adult sons continue to sport their signature slicked-back hairdos, his third wife was once photographed cheekily eating diamonds, and several members of his Cabinet are now under scrutiny for lavish spending and government-funded jet travel. Judging by Monday’s indictment of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager also acquired a taste for a class he couldn’t afford, spending dizzying sums of laundered money stored in offshore accounts, and racking up over $1.3 million in bills at luxury stores in Beverly Hills and New York, to achieve a similarly Trumpian aesthetic. (Manafort has pleaded not guilty.)

For a guy who reportedly spent $849,000 at a clothing store in New York between 2008 and 2014, and $520,440 at a clothing store in Beverly Hills, Manafort was not known for his sophisticated style. Alan Flusser, a New York-based menswear designer who has known Manafort since the 1980s, described the political lobbyist as “more into the Michael Douglas-Gordon Gekko imagery than the Brooks Brothers, inside-the-Beltway, button-down look” favored among the purposefully drab D.C. power elite. His further description of Manafort as “a little flashier” and “trying to project an aura of power and success” sounded similarly Trumpian. (Ironically, Manafort’s expensive power suits became evidence against him when the F.B.I. took pains to photograph them during a raid on his home this past summer.)

The rest of the document includes equally curious details: who spends $900,000 on antique rugs? One shop owner in Alexandria, Virginia, denied that Manafort was a frequent customer—“I’d have a lot more money if he had been”—and another antique-rug gallery owner, said that her high-end clients, which include embassies and hotels, would never spend that much on rugs, “and they have all the money in the world.” His pricey home renovations seem equally futile; real-estate broker Diane Saatchi analyzed Manafort’s spending on his Hamptons house and told the Times that it made no sense for him to spend $420,000 to renovate a pool house, or $800,000 to landscape his rather small (for the Hamptons) property. “He could’ve spent that,” Saatchi said, “but close to $200,000 a year seems expensive given the size and style. I’m going to take a wild guess that if he paid that much just to maintain the landscape, he was overcharged.” (To add insult to injury, she said that his house did not seem “like a manicured property.”)

What with the suits, the rugs, and the vacation properties, it’s easy to forget that the first hints of Manafort’s hidden wealth came from his real-estate purchases in New York, which fit a pattern common to those laundering money. According to the indictment, he made an all-cash purchase of a SoHo loft, then borrowed a mortgage against the property, claiming that his son-in-law and daughter lived there to get a better deal. Then, perhaps unhappy with the paltry $3.185 million mortgage he squeezed out of a $2.9 million property, he reportedly rented it out on Airbnb.