Hi, this is Allison Lyons with my dog Beans calling from the Trinity Trail in Fort Worth, Texas, where it's currently 103 degrees.

We aren't sure what's hotter, the heat or the politics. This podcast was recorded at 10.32 a.m. Eastern Time Monday, July 30th.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Hopefully the heat. Keep up with all of MPR's political coverage on MPR.org, on the MPR1 app, and on your local public radio stations.

I know that's what Beans does. Alright, here's the show.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. Tomorrow the trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort begins.

So we're here to explain what you need to know about it. I'm Sarah McCammon, I cover the White House.

I'm Kerry Johnson, just to correspond to it. And I'm Dominican Montenegro political editor.

Now this trial is tangled up in a web involving the Trump campaign, the Russia investigation, and Manafort's personal business dealings.

So we should start by breaking it down, figure out what it's about, what it's not about.

Kerry, you're our expert on this. Let's start with what Manafort is charged with, and we'll go back from there.

Yeah, Paul Manafort's facing something like 18 charges of tax fraud and bank fraud and failing to file certain reports with the government.

It all relates to income he generated by doing some really lucrative work for the government of Ukraine, the pro-Russia government in Ukraine.

And the Justice Department says when that work started to dry up, Manafort started to take action to borrow against real estate, and really things went very south in terms of his finances.

So mostly this is a money and a paper document case involving Paul Manafort.

And Kerry, these charges came up because of the Russia investigation. Right? I mean, how do we get here?

Yeah, Paul Manafort was Trump's campaign chairman for a critical period of time in 2016, and he had longstanding relationships with people in Russia, and people in Ukraine who had ties to Vladimir Putin and others in Russia.

And so he of course came under the purview of the special counsel looking for links between Americans and Russians in 2016.

Now, he's not charged with anything specifically related to Russian election interference, Russian hacking, or anything like that.

But the thinking is that Paul Manafort could have a lot of useful connections and understanding of whether anyone in the campaign was talking with Russians on the QT during 2016.

Yeah, I mean, there was some reporting around the campaign and around the times some of this was coming out about Manafort's lifestyle.

Right? I mean, he had managed to develop a pretty lucrative, pretty nice lifestyle, and he had to support it somehow.

Yeah, in fact, the Justice Department list of witnesses in this case includes somebody from the New York Yankees because Manafort had seasoned tickets to the Yankees.

...