WASHINGTON -- Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, agreed Friday to cooperate with the special counsel, Robert Mueller, as part of a deal in which he pleaded guilty to reduced charges stemming from consulting work he did for pro-Russia political forces in Ukraine.
Appearing in U.S. District Court in Washington, Manafort entered guilty pleas on two conspiracy charges.
Kevin Downing, an attorney for Manafort, gave a brief statement outside the courthouse after the plea hearing. "He wanted to make sure his family remained safe and live a good life," Downing said of Manafort. "He has accepted responsibility."
When asked if the deal with Mueller's team is a full cooperation agreement, Downing replied "it is." He did not respond to questions about whether Manafort has been interviewed by Mueller's team or if Manafort's defense team remains in a joint defense agreement with Trump's attorneys.
Manafort's defenders have long insisted that he would not cooperate with Mueller and that he didn't know any incriminating information against the president.
Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said at the beginning of Friday's plea hearing that Manafort has agreed to cooperate with investigators, saying the 17-page plea document included the terms of Manafort's expected cooperation.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson noted Manafort has agreed to cooperate "fully and truthfully" with the investigation conducted by the Office of Special Counsel, including participating in interviews and debriefings, producing any documents in his control, testifying, and agreeing to delay sentencing until a time set by government.
Manafort also waived his right to have counsel present for every debriefing or interview.
Under the terms of the deal, Manafort faces a possible maximum prison sentence of about 10 years, though that doesn't include any likely sentence for his conviction last month in Virginia. His attorneys may seek a lower sentence, and prosecutors did not agree to recommend any sentence. The judge made no mention of any offer by prosecutors for a letter recommending leniency in case of substantial cooperation.
Before Manafort pleaded guilty, Weissmann gave a 40-minute description of the criminal conduct in the case.
"I believe it's fair to say that's probably the longest and most detailed summary that ever preceded this question, but is what the prosecutor said a true and accurate description of what you did in this case?" Jackson asked Manafort.
"I did. It is," Manafort said, resting both hands on the lectern before him and flanked by his attorney Richard Westling.
It was not immediately clear how the plea agreement might affect Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and related questions about possible collusion by the Trump campaign and obstruction of justice by Trump.
For months, Trump has praised Manafort for fighting the charges. In private discussions with his lawyers, Trump has raised the possibility of pardoning Manafort.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a brief statement after the announcement. "This had absolutely nothing to do with the President or his victorious 2016 Presidential campaign," she said. "It is totally unrelated."
The president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, quickly sought to distance Trump from the plea deal.
"Once again an investigation has concluded with a plea having nothing to do with President Trump or the Trump campaign," he said in a statement. "The reason: The president did nothing wrong and Paul Manafort will tell the truth."
Downing said it was a "tough day" for his client.
"He has accepted responsibility and this is for conduct that dates back many years," Downing said. "And everybody should remember that."
Manafort held senior roles in the Trump campaign for five months in 2016, a period of interest to Mueller's team.
Manafort's work in Ukraine also put him in the middle of a network of lobbyists and influence brokers who are now under investigation by federal prosecutors in New York. They include Tony Podesta, a prominent Democratic lobbyist; Vin Weber, a former Republican member of Congress; and Gregory Craig, a former White House counsel in President Barack Obama's administration.
As part of the deal, the government has the authority to seize four of Manafort's homes in New York and Virginia as well as the money in a number of bank accounts, court documents filed by prosecutors said.
In documents filed with the U.S. District Court in Washington, prosecutors from Mueller's office charged Manafort with one count of conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice. Manafort pleaded guilty to those charges.
Manafort was not sentenced. For now he will remain in jail, where he has been since June, when prosecutors accused him of witness tampering.
The prosecutors dropped five other charges encompassing money laundering and violations of a lobbying disclosure law.
Manafort was convicted last month on bank and tax fraud charges after a trial in federal court in Alexandria, Va. He was scheduled to face a second trial on the seven separate but related charges in Washington starting next week.
RUSSIAN LINKS
It is not clear what information Manafort might have that would be valuable to Mueller's investigation. Manafort served in several roles in the Trump campaign and was present for the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between a number of campaign officials and a Russian lawyer who was thought to be offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Manafort was once a business partner of another person who has figured in the Mueller inquiry: Roger Stone, who was once a political adviser to Trump. And in his Trump campaign roles, he worked closely with Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law.
Manafort had business dealings with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who has close ties to President Vladimir Putin of Russia. By 2016, Deripaska was suing Manafort and his business partner, Rick Gates, for tens of millions of dollars he said they owed him. Manafort claimed that Deripaska was in fact in debt to him.
In July 2016, just before the Republican National Convention, Manafort sought to get a message to Deripaska offering "private briefings" about the presidential race.
Manafort tried to pass that message to Deripaska through Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian citizen whose relationship with Manafort has figured repeatedly in court filings by Mueller's team. Prosecutors have said Kilimnik had active ties to a Russian intelligence service -- including during 2016, when he was in contact with both Manafort and Gates.
For the previous decade, the three men had worked together promoting pro-Russian political forces in Ukraine and boosting the political fortunes of Viktor Yanukovych, who was elected president of Ukraine in 2010.
Prosecutors said Manafort spread stories to discredit Yanukovych's opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, and secretly coordinated with an Israeli government official to publicize the idea that a U.S. Cabinet official was an anti-Semite for supporting Tymoshenko, who had formed an alliance with a Ukrainian political party that had shared anti-Semitic views.
"I have someone pushing it on the NY Post. Bada bing bada boom," Manafort wrote to a colleague, court documents said.
Four former Trump aides in addition to Manafort have pleaded guilty to charges related to the special counsel investigation: Michael Cohen, the president's longtime personal lawyer; Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser; Rick Gates, the former deputy campaign chairman; and George Papadopoulos, a former campaign adviser.
The president railed against plea deals in general after Cohen pleaded guilty last month to breaking campaign finance laws and other charges, implicating Trump in the cover-up of a potential sex scandal during the 2016 presidential race. Trump said that trading information on someone else for lesser charges or a lighter sentence "almost ought to be outlawed."
Manafort, who had repeatedly insisted that he would not cooperate with the special counsel, has been reassessing his legal risks after last month's trial. He was found guilty in that case of eight counts of tax fraud, bank fraud and failure to report a foreign bank account, crimes that legal experts predicted were likely to result in a prison term of 6 to 12 years.
Information for this article was contributed by Sharon LaFraniere of The New York Times; by Spencer S. Hsu, Devlin Barrett, Rosalind S. Helderman and Rachel Weiner of The Washington Post; and by Eric Tucker, Chad Day and Michael Balsamo of The Associated Press.
A Section on 09/15/2018