2 years ago

At 10:00 a.m. EDT this morning, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort goes on trial in a Northern Virginian courthouse outside of Washington, D.C.

While the issues in immediate question will be allegations of tax and bank fraud, the case has far-reaching repercussions, as he is the first defendant on trial related to the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. That said, prosecutors have verbally committed to not bringing up the word “Russia” as there is a concern this may send signals to some potentially biased jurors. Manafort’s defense also pushed to move the trial to somewhere they deemed more politically equal than Northern Virginia, though the judge declined their request.

With the topic of Russia at arm’s length, the focus is expected to remain on whether Mr. Manafort’s personal income tax returns were false, or if he willfully failed to file reports of foreign accounts, and whether he conspired to commit, or committed bank fraud.

PredictIt traders are considering three questions related to Manafort:

For starters, the odds Manafort will be convicted of a federal crime by year-end 2018 have been bullish, especially the last three months (see below):

Not only are traders relatively confident that a conviction will happen, but they consider it will be for multiple charges:

However, with the exception of a spike on June 4, the odds President Trump pardons him by year-end 2018 have been highly unlikely at about 10 percent. Whether that’s due to the market timeframe or something else isn’t known. There is some debate over Manafort’s defense strategy to date and what that may imply about the odds of a pardon.

Prosecutors plan to call about 30 witnesses to testify against Manafort and show the jury hundreds of financial records, emails, and photos. Five witnesses who wanted to avoid testifying have been given limited immunity in the case.

Opening arguments are later this week, so stay tuned for developments in each of these markets. The trial is expected to last three weeks.