By Nathan Layne, Jonathan Landay and Karen Freifeld
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort will cooperate with the federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, a dramatic turnaround in a probe that the U.S. president derides as a political witch hunt.
After months of refusing to assist Special Counsel Robert Mueller's inquiry into Russian interference and possible coordination between Trump campaign members and Moscow, Manafort finally took a plea deal on Friday and agreed to cooperate in return for reduced charges. Trump had previously praised Manafort in an Aug. 22 Twitter post as "a brave man" for his refusal to cooperate with the inquiry.
It is unclear what information Manafort, a longtime Republican political consultant who ran the campaign as it took off in mid-2016, could offer prosecutors but his cooperation might bring Trump, his family and associates under closer scrutiny.
The White House distanced Trump from the man who helped get him elected in November 2016 against the odds in a bitterly contested campaign in which he defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.
"This had absolutely nothing to do with the president or his victorious 2016 presidential campaign," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement. "It is totally unrelated."
Cornell University professor of law Jens David Ohlin said it was hard to predict what information a cooperation agreement will yield but that Manafort's deal could be a serious problem for Trump.
"If Manafort is willing to give Mueller information about Trump's contacts with Russia, whether the contacts were direct or indirect, then this really is a disaster for Trump and his associates."
Manafort is the fifth person linked to Trump to plead guilty to criminal charges. The others are his former longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen, former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, Trump's first national security adviser Michael Flynn and Manafort's business protege Rick Gates, who also worked on the 2016 campaign.
Manafort, 69, pleaded guilty in a federal court in Washington on Friday to conspiracy against the United States - a charge that includes a range of conduct from money laundering to unregistered lobbying - and conspiracy to obstruct justice for his attempts to tamper with witnesses in his case. The prosecution dropped five other counts.
The plea, coming on the heels of a conviction in a separate case last month, concludes a steep fall from grace for a multi-millionaire who was often at Trump's side as he took U.S. politics by storm in 2016. The investigation has cast a shadow over the president as the leader of the Republican Party going into the Nov. 6 congressional elections that will determine whether or not Republicans keep control of Congress.
Mueller’s team told the court that Manafort had previewed what information he could offer, leading to the deal. The plea agreement requires him to cooperate completely with the government, including giving interviews without his attorney present and testifying before any grand juries or at any trials.
Manafort is facing up to 10 years in prison on the two charges in Washington alone, and another eight to 10 years on a conviction in Virginia in August on tax and bank fraud charges.
But depending on the extent of his cooperation and the degree to which prosecutors argue for reducing his sentence, Manafort could end up getting anywhere from a year to five years in prison, according to Mark Allenbaugh, a federal sentencing expert. “It would not surprise me if he got time served for both cases,” Allenbaugh said.
Manafort was convicted last month in Virginia on charges that pre-dated his stint on the Trump campaign and involved his work with pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. The jury found that he hid from U.S. tax authorities $16 million he earned as a political consultant in Ukraine to fund an opulent lifestyle and lied to banks to secure $20 million in loans.
In court on Friday, Manafort stood stock still before the judge, answering her questions with single words in a low tone, or sat at the defense table. He sat straight or leaned his chin on his right hand throughout a lengthy recital of the charges to which he pleaded guilty.
DrPoopNstuff on September 14th, 2018 at 18:34 UTC »
Cost of investigation: $7million Assets seized: $46 million
Turning a profit on the Mueller investigation? Priceless!
maple_the_red on September 14th, 2018 at 18:16 UTC »
"What I meant to say was no collusion't."
slakmehl on September 14th, 2018 at 15:03 UTC »
Here is the text of the plea, which takes the unusual step of walking through the evidence for each count - 37 pages long with multiple exhibits - including FARA violations, money laundering and obstruction of justice.
This is the 5th member of the Trump campaign to plead guilty to criminal charges related to the Mueller probe, in addition to two other guilty pleas and 26 indictments.
Finally, the plea includes the forefeiture of $46 million in assets which cannot be pardoned away, so the Mueller probe is now operating in the black (up $30 million from this plea alone against $16.7 million in costs). Mueller is making money for US taxpayers.
Update - Prosecutors just made the surprising announcement in court that the plea includes a 17 page cooperation agreement. If this is actually a full cooperation agreement, it will entail withdrawal from the Joint Defense Agreement with Trump (as happened with Michael Cohen in July), which one would expect to mean some fussiness from Trump is on the way.
Update 2 - The relevant section of the cooperation agreement. It is full cooperation on everything, and Manafort has already begun proferring information.
Mueller is now, at a minimum, inside the room at the Trump Tower meeting, in addition to whatever else is implied by NBC's reporting in January that Trump appears to believe Manafort can incriminate him personally in the probe.