Manafort breached plea agreement: Mueller

Paul Manafort, US President Donald Trumps former campaign chairman, repeatedly lied to federal investigators in breach of a plea agreement he signed two months ago, Special Counsel Robert Muellers office said in a court filing.

Prosecutors working for Mueller on Monday said in the filing that Manafort’s

“crimes and lies” about “a variety of subject matters” relieve them of all promises they made to him in the plea agreement, reports The New York Times.

But under the terms of the agreement, Manafort, 69, cannot withdraw his guilty plea. Defence lawyers disagreed that Manafort had violated the deal.

In the same filing, they said that Manafort “believes he has provided truthful information”.

But given the impasse between the two sides, they asked Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia to set a sentencing date for Manafort, who has been in solitary confinement in a detention centre in Alexandria, Virginia.

Striking a plea deal with Manafort in September potentially gave prosecutors access to information that could prove useful to their investigation.

But the filing on Monday, a rare step in a plea deal, suggested that they thought Manafort was withholding details that could be pertinent to the Russia inquiry or other cases.