Good Tuesday morning, I'm Anna Palmer, and welcome to your Politico Playbook Audio Briefing,

sponsored by PepsiCo Foundation. And I'm Jake Sherman. We're kicking off the morning with some

truth talk about Paul Manafort. Manafort allegedly evaded taxes. That's what he's going on trial

for beginning today. But his situation is instructive in thinking about the current corporate climate

in D.C. For starters, being a lobbyist

ain't what it used to be. Blue Chip clients, like Fortune 500 companies, used to shell out massive

retainers to lobbyists for basic government relations work, no longer. So many lobbyists who want to

keep up their high-flying lifestyle or make their corporate overlords happy have gone overseas to

represent despots and strongmen

who are willing to pay piles of dough because they have massive reputational problems and a hard time

finding someone willing to take up their cause in the U.S.

To sum it up, foreign clients are often willing to pay 10 times the fee for a sliver of the

work. That's created a skewed incentive

structure that encourages operatives to take work from unsavory figures. And while unsavory,

it's attractive work. Countries fly American lobbyists all over the world in first class.

They pay huge sums. They treat these influence peddlers like royalty. Tony Podesta saw himself

as a man about the globe. Who wouldn't like that? But the bad apples get caught. Manifort had it good.

60 million bones from Ukraine is a lot of coin. Jack Abramoff got caught. He pleaded guilty to mail fraud

for trying to bribe public officials and oh yeah, tax evasion. Some say that's what's about to happen to Manafort.

Here's what to expect today. Darren Samuelson fills us in on the state of play. There's one final pretrial hearing at 9 a.m. in Alexandria, where Judge Ellis is going to work through some late debate over some of

the evidence both sides wanted to show during the trial. Then it's time to pick the jury,

with voir dire starting at 10 a.m. There are about 60 potential jurors still in the mix, with Ellis

...