The former Trump campaign chairman has pleaded not guilty to all 18 counts. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Manafort Trial Manafort trial Day 13: No verdict as defense calls jury's questions 'a good sign' The former Trump campaign chairman has pleaded not guilty to 18 counts of tax and bank fraud.

Jurors in Paul Manafort's bank- and tax-fraud trial ended their first day of deliberations without a verdict, but posed a set of questions to the judge overseeing the case that could indicate trouble for the prosecution.

A note from the jury read aloud in court Thursday afternoon asked about the legal requirements behind four of the felony charges facing the former Trump campaign chairman: allegations that he failed to file reports on bank accounts located overseas. Jurors also asked U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III to provide clarification on what constitutes reasonable doubt.


The queries could alarm special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutors because they suggest the jurors were not immediately convinced that the case against Manafort is a slam dunk. But it could also mean that jurors have not bought the defense's central argument: that longtime Manafort deputy Rick Gates was the one actually responsible for Manafort's alleged wrongdoing.

After the brief, late-afternoon session, Manafort's lawyer, Kevin Downing, called the queries from the jurors a positive development for his client.

“I think it’s all a good sign, yes," Downing told reporters and TV crews assembled outside the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia.

"We took out some good news. Jury’s been deliberating. It has some questions which the judge addressed. They’ve asked to come back tomorrow to continue deliberations. Overall, a good day for Mr. Manafort," the attorney said.

A spokesman for Mueller's office, Peter Carr, declined to comment on the jury's questions.

Ellis said he was not inclined to provide much in the way of a response to most of the jury's questions. When he called in the jury just after 5 P.M., he wound up largely repeating instructions given to the jury earlier, including a tautological definition that a reasonable doubt is "a doubt based on reason."

Among the jurors' other questions was a request for a definition of “shelf company”—a corporation with no recorded activity—and about legal obligations for such companies to file reports on their income. Gates, the prosecution’s star witness, testified last week that Manafort used Cyprus-based “shelf companies” to park tens of millions of dollars earned for consulting work in Ukraine.

The jury’s most detailed question, according to Ellis, was this: “Is someone required to file an FBAR [foreign bank account report] if you have less than 50 percent of an account and don’t have signature authority, but do have authority to direct disbursement of the funds?”

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Lawyers for Manafort and the prosecution were summoned to the courtroom about seven hours after the jury began deliberating. Manafort also entered the courtroom clad in a dark suit and accompanied by a lone federal marshal.

The prosecutors and defense attorneys had no objections to the answers Ellis initially proposed before calling jurors back in, but the lawyers reminded Ellis that there were jury instructions on the legal requirements related to foreign bank accounts reports. Ellis' stock answer to most of the questions was to tell jurors that their recollection of the evidence should govern.

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.

When they returned to the courtroom Thursday afternoon, jurors scattered in different seats in the jury box than the ones many regularly appeared in during the trial. However, they also have more room to spread out since four alternates were sent home Wednesday.

A daylong deliberation

Ellis sent the 12-person jury off in the morning with a lengthy list of instructions on how they are to weigh reams of evidence and testimony presented by Mueller's prosecutors and Manafort's lawyers over the course of the two-plus week trial in Alexandria, Virginia.

“You may deliberate as long or as little as you like,” Ellis told the jurors before he officially impaneled them. “How long you deliberate is entirely up to you.”

A court security official who briefed reporters later Thursday morning said the jury can work as long as they want each day, even beyond their typical 5:30 p.m. end time. The official said a verdict will be read in court immediately after it's reached — even if it comes after-hours.

After the Manafort jury was sent off to deliberate, Ellis moved on with other cases on his docket, including an employment discrimination matter and another involving worker's compensation.

Manafort’s attorneys camped out at the Westin Alexandria hotel restaurant, across the street from the courthouse, along with dozens of reporters and videographers. Players from the New York Jets in town for a Thursday night pre-season game against the Washington Redskins, circulated through the lobby and by late afternoon left with a police escort for FedEx Field.

While Manafort's wife Kathleen wasn't in court during the morning session, or the later one related to the jury note, she joined her husband's lawyers in the restaurant late Thursday afternoon and conferred with them again at the hotel later on.

The jurors are working out of a ninth-floor conference room because the space where they usually meet would be too crowded.

"When you roll everything that needs to be rolled in, it puts them in closer quarters than they may like," Ellis explained in open court Thursday morning about the special accommodations.

The jury in the Manafort trial includes six men and six women from Northern Virginia.

The Trump campaign's former chairman has pleaded not guilty to all 18 counts. The charges: five counts for filing false tax returns between 2010 and 2014; four counts for failing to report foreign bank accounts; and nine counts of bank fraud or conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

Thursday morning's perfunctory hearing to send off the jurors ended on a humorous note. As Ellis turned his attention to other cases on his docket, he asked the lawyers in his next case — a supervised release hearing — if they were present.

“Mr. Trump, you're here for what?” Ellis asked the court, as heads craned to see whether the judge had made a mistake or whom he was addressing. Indeed, the assistant U.S. attorney, James Trump, was in the courtroom.

The room, including Manafort in a dark suit, broke into laughter at the light moment.

Didi Martinez contributed to this report.