Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was expected to plead guilty Friday ahead of second trial, a new court filing shows.
The plea deal would allow Manafort to avoid a trial that had been scheduled to start next week in Washington on charges related to Ukrainian political consulting work.
It is not clear whether any agreement with prosecutors would require him to co-operate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into possible co-ordination between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia.
In the new filing, prosecutors dropped the bulk of the charges against Manafort, filing new paperwork that includes just two counts but that resembles in many ways the original allegations made in an indictment last year.
The charges were contained a criminal information, a document that can only be filed with a defendant’s consent and typically signals a deal has been reached. The charges include conspiracy against the United States and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
The allegations do not involve his work with the Trump presidential campaign.
Manafort was convicted last month of eight financial crimes in a separate trial in Virginia. He was facing a second trial Monday on charges related to Ukrainian political consulting work, including failing to register as a foreign agent.
It’s unclear how the possible deal might affect Manafort’s pursuit of a pardon from President Donald Trump. The president has signalled that he’s sympathetic to Manafort’s cause, and in comments to Politico, his attorney-spokesman Rudy Giuliani said a plea without a co-operation agreement wouldn’t foreclose the possibility of a pardon.
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Manafort has aggressively fought the charges against him and taken shots at his co-defendant, Rick Gates, who cut a deal with prosecutors earlier this year that included a co-operation agreement.
At the time of Gates’ plea, Manafort issued a statement saying he “had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence.” And during his Virginia trial in August, Manafort’s lawyers spent considerable time painting Gates as a liar, embezzler, philanderer and turncoat who would say anything to get a lighter prison sentence.
Pleading guilty would allow Manafort to avoid a trial that was expected to last at least three weeks and posed the potential of adding years onto the seven to 10 years he is already facing under federal sentencing guidelines from his conviction in Virginia.
A jury found Manafort guilty of eight counts of tax evasion, failing to report foreign bank accounts and bank fraud. Jurors deadlocked on 10 other counts.
In the Washington case, prosecutors were set to lay out in great detail Manafort’s political consulting and lobbying work on behalf of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and the pro-Russian Party of Regions.
Prosecutors say that Manafort directed a large scale lobbying operation in the U.S. for Ukrainian interests without registering with the Justice Department as required by the federal Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA. Manafort was accused of concealing from the IRS tens of millions of dollars in proceeds from his Ukrainian patrons and conspiring to launder that money through offshore accounts in Cyprus and elsewhere.
Manafort had denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty. Even after his indictment last October, though, prosecutors say he continued to commit crimes by tampering with witnesses. The discovery of his witness contacts led to a superseding indictment in June and Manafort’s jailing ahead of his trial.
In addition to the witness tampering counts, Manafort had been formally charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent, conspiring to launder money and lying to the FBI and Justice Department about the nature of his work. Court papers filed in the case indicated that he could have faced between 15 and 19 1/2 years in prison under federal guidelines.
The charges do not relate to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Eric Tucker, Chad Day And Michael Balsamo, The Associated Press
