Associated Press/Craig Ruttle; Associated Press/Alex Brandon; Business InsiderMichael Cohen and Paul Manafort are the two highest ranking people who have flipped.
Advertisement
According to court documents, Manafort negotiated to give up his SoHo apartment on Baxter Street for his house in Arlington, Virginia, which prosecutors considered for the forfeiture deal.
That could be potentially damaging for Donald Trump and his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., as Manafort was present at the Trump Tower meeting in 2016 where members of the campaign met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Alex Wong/Getty ImagesRobert Mueller has extensive experience prosecuting organized crime and white collar cases from his time as Federal Bureau of Investigation director.
Starr acknowledged that Trump has the right to pardon Manafort, which the President has reportedly discussed with his legal team, but said such a move would be “unwise”.
The possibilities are extensive.
Deripaska has known Manafort for a long time.
Manafort’s plea could be a key cog in pushing Mueller’s case toward its ultimate end. The second count, for conspiracy to obstruct justice, concerns attempts to tamper with witnesses related to Manafort’s foreign lobbying.
In the case of Patten, the special counsel’s office didn’t even handle the case itself; it spun off a recommendation to prosecute to the National Security Division of the big Justice Department.
“If he needs private briefings we can accommodate”, Manafort wrote, according to the Post, which cited portions of a July 7, 2016, email read to the newspaper.
“Nothing’s going to happen to Mueller’s investigation politically”. He’s a Democrat, and he clearly has been skeptical about the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian Federation.
Gates, another Trump campaign aide, spent three days on the stand, telling jurors how he committed crimes alongside Manafort for years.
If Manafort confirms the established narrative about the session, that is significant. The Senate Judiciary Committee has released from the Trump Tower meeting, but so far nothing more detailed from him about it has emerged publicly.
SIMON: And I understand there’s language that if he gets a pardon.
A White House spokeswoman quickly sought to distance Trump from the plea deal, saying Manafort’s admission of guilt was “totally unrelated” to Trump. Trump’s former personal lawyer has separately pleaded guilty in NY.
Last Friday, Manafort pleaded guilty to two federal crimes after he made a deal with prosecutors and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s Russian Federation probe, allowing him to avoid a second criminal trial.
Imbroglio-watchers wondered whether Mueller’s office might observe a 60-day quiet period ahead of Election Day to forestall accusations that its work created political disruptions for Republicans.
Then came Friday’s extraordinary development when Manafort agreed to provide any information asked of him, testify whenever asked and even work undercover if necessary. In that way, Manafort’s deal isn’t really just about Manafort, and it may not be only about what he knows. Gates may have been a prosecution witness in his Washington trial as well.
The agreement doesn’t specify what if anything prosecutors hope to receive about Trump, but Manafort could be well-positioned to provide key insight for investigators working to establish whether the campaign coordinated with Russian Federation.
One involves the other track of the Russian Federation imbroglio, involving alleged.
“Organized crime is particularly dependent on insider witnesses, because everything is kind of hidden and done in the shadows”, said Alex Whiting, a former Justice Department lawyer who prosecuted organized crime and corruption cases when he worked at the USA attorney’s office in Boston. But in television interviews at the time, Manafort denied that the campaign played any role in changing the language.
Which is possible. But I’m guessing that pardon is off the table. Pending Mueller’s final report and despite the fondest hopes of Trump’s opponents, there may be no such provable links.
“For months, as part of their joint defence agreement, they would have been strategising together”, Schiff noted, adding that Manafort might be able to share information on “what conversations” Trump might have had with Manafort “after the charges were brought against him”.
Advertisement
SIMON: And, Carrie, how do you assess the White House reaction? That was also the day, you might recall, that Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts of his own.
