The former campaign adviser for President Donald Trump, Richard Gates is going to testify against his former associate, Trump’s campaign head Paul Manafort. The testimony is part of a plea deal that Gates has made with special counsel Robert Mueller.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the former adviser and Manafort business associate is reportedly nearing a deal with Mueller’s team and will plead guilty to fraud charges in the next few days. Both Gates and Manafort were previously indicted in Mueller’s probe in October where they pleaded not guilty to the charges.
CNN was the first to report that Gates had been working to strike a deal with Mueller where a source close to the investigation said that Gates will change his plea “within the next few days,” expecting a far shorter sentence.
The Hill reported that Gates hired a prominent white-collar attorney last month, who was spotted twice meeting with Mueller’s team. The meeting fueled speculation that Gates was moving to cooperate with the special counsel.
In a court filing on Friday, Mueller accused Manafort of bank fraud, but new criminal charges against the former Trump campaign head were not brought up.
However, the October 27 indictment showed that prosecutors had amassed substantial documentation to buttress their charges that Manafort and Gates, who were colleagues in political consulting for about a decade, had engaged in a complex series of allegedly illegal transactions rooted in Ukraine. The indictment alleged that both men, who for years were unregistered agents of the Ukrainian government, hid millions of dollars of Ukraine-based payments from U.S. authorities.
Previously, former Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos and former national security adviser Michael Flynn both pleaded guilty to charges in Mueller’s probe. Thirteen Russian nationals and three Russian groups were also indicted by Mueller on Friday for allegedly interfering in the 2016 election.
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