be the turning point. laporta alleging that in september of 2015, this was when manafort was in financial trouble, she gave him an estimate of the taxes he owed, and she was told manafort couldn't pay it. quote, rick -- that's rick gates, who's also expected to testify -- said it was too high. manafort didn't have the money. manafort's solution, laporta testified, was to inflate the amount of a loan which would then reduce on paper his reported income, and thus his income tax, and in turn, what he owed the government. in other words, tax fraud, tax evasion. which, as a professional involved in this business, cindy laporta did understand. so then you have mahler's prosecutor ask, what was your understanding at the time of whether that was appropriate? laporta replies, "it's not appropriate." and she confessed she went along with it and helped manafort falsify those critical documents. "i could have refused to file the tax return. that would have exposed the