Rick Gates is reportedly close to becoming Mueller’s third cooperating ex-Trump aide
"Part 141, some of..."
CNN reports Gates is finalizing a plea deal with Robert Mueller.
By Andrew Prokopandrew@vox.com Feb 15, 2018, 6:54pm EST
Rick Gates Mark Wilson/Getty
Special counsel Robert Mueller may be close to flipping another former Trump staffer.
Rick Gates — Paul Manafort’s longtime junior business partner, and a 2016 Trump campaign staffer — is “finalizing” a plea deal in which he’d cooperate with the Mueller investigation, CNN’s Katelyn Polantz and Sara Murray report. Gates has been in negotiations with Mueller’s team about cooperating for over a month, their report says, citing sources familiar with the case.
Back in October, Mueller’s team indicted Gates and Manafort on a combined 12 counts that mostly focused on alleged money laundering, failure to disclose financial assets, and false statements regarding their work for the government of Ukraine and a Russia-affiliated Ukrainian political party — matters that didn’t have anything specific to do with Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. (Both pleaded not guilty.)
But apparently, Mueller didn’t intend to stop there. The special counsel’s team had prepared superseding indictments that would add to or replace the original charges against both Manafort and Gates, per an earlier CNN report. Facing an expensive legal defense with no end in sight, Gates signed a new lawyer who has been working on cutting him a plea deal.
The biggest question, though, is whether Gates’s possible flip is mainly bad news for Paul Manafort concerning those lobbying and money laundering charges ... or whether it would have even bigger implications for the investigation into Russian interference as a whole, and into President Trump specifically.
Because if Manafort were to know of anything that could implicate Trump in connection with Russia, it seems quite plausible Gates would know it, too.
See also a good little summary of much to date here
This not my post but I completely agree: It came from Yahoo news =================================================== My Point Of View. 3 hours ago I really want to address Trump/GOP supporters here and ask them this question: Just how suspicious are Trump’s connections to Russia. After all, we have never ever had a POTUS before with any connections to Russia. Consider this: https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=138458256
Mueller isn't flipping burgers.
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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