Manafort conviction: Only one juror held out on convicting Trump campaign chief of all counts

'We all tried to convince her to look at the paper trail. We laid it out in front of her again and again and she still said that she had a reasonable doubt'

Just one juror prevented former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort from being convicted of all 18 charges in his recent criminal trial, another juror has revealed.

Manafort was found guilty of eight counts of bank and tax fraud on Tuesday following a three-week trial at a court in Alexandria, Virginia.

Paula Duncan, a juror in the trial, said there was "one holdout" preventing unanimous agreement on the 10 other charges.

"We all tried to convince her to look at the paper trail. We laid it out in front of her again and again and she still said that she had a reasonable doubt," Ms Duncan told Fox News.

The jury found Manafort guilty on two counts of bank fraud, five counts of tax fraud and one charge of failing to disclose foreign bank accounts, giving special counsel Robert Mueller a victory in the first trial arising from his investigation of Russia's role in the 2016 US election.

After the jury of six men and six women failed to reach a consensus on the other counts, Judge TS Ellis declared a mistrial on the 10 charges.

In the first public comments by a juror in the case, Ms Duncan said that 11 members of the jury were in agreement that Manafort was guilty on all 18 felony charges but that they could not get the one holdout to change her mind after nearly four days of deliberations.

"We didn't want it to be hung so we tried for an extended period of time to convince her. But in the end she held out and that's why we have 10 counts that did not get a verdict," she said.

Ms Duncan said she was speaking out to inform the public and that she was not concerned about her safety. Judge Ellis said he had received threats and he has not released juror names, citing worries about their safety.

"I thought that the public, America, needed to know how close this was and the evidence was overwhelming," she said.

Ms Duncan said she was a Trump supporter and wanted to believe that Mr Manafort was innocent. She noted that even his critics had described him as a brilliant political consultant and that Mr Trump had trusted him with overseeing his campaign.

"I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty. But he was and no one is above the law," she added.

Ms Duncan said some of the jurors had a problem accepting the testimony of Rick Gates, Manafort's former right-hand man, because he was testifying as part of a plea deal and "would have done anything that he could to preserve himself".

She said the jury decided to not consider Gates' testimony and focus instead on the documentary evidence.

Ms Duncan also had tough words for lawyers on both sides of the case.

She said the prosecution looked bored at times and that she saw two of them napping. Manafort's lawyers, on the other hand, gave short cross-examinations, rarely objected and gave off an "easygoing" vibe.

"I think I expected a little more," Ms Duncan said.

Ms Duncan added the deliberations were at times heated, leading some jurors to tears at one point, but that politics did not influence their decision-making.

"I think we all went in there like we were supposed to and assumed that Mr Manafort was innocent. We did due diligence, we applied the evidence, our notes, the witnesses and we came out with guilty verdicts on the eight counts," she said.

Additional reporting by Reuters