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‘Secret Life,’ Affairs Drove Rick Gates’ ‘Scheme’: Manafort Defense Lawyer

“There was a time in my life when I had another relationship,” Gates said Tuesday.

Before things took a turn for the lurid in the Paul Manafort trial on Wednesday—when his defense accused his former right-hand man of having as many as four extramarital relationships—the ex Trump campaign chairman’s lawyers were clearly framing their attack on Rick Gates to offer a motive for his admitted embezzlement from his onetime boss: one of those apparent affairs. In cross-examination Tuesday, Gates appeared to anticipate where the defense was going with its questions about the flat he kept in London, trips to the U.K. on first-class air travel, and the “secret life” it represented. “There was a time in my life when I had another relationship,” he said. Gates didn’t detail the relationship—or any of the allegedly others—or explain who it was with, but said his wife was aware of it.

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