Manafort pleads guilty, agrees to cooperate with Mueller probe
Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, agreed on Friday to tell all he knows to special counsel Robert Mueller as part of a plea deal that could shape the final stages of the inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The deal was a surrender by Manafort, who had vowed for months to prove his innocence in a case stemming from his work as a political consultant in Ukraine.
Manafort’s decision, announced at a federal court hearing in Washington in which he pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges, was likely to unsettle Trump, who had praised Manafort for standing up to prosecutors’ pressure and had floated the idea of pardoning him.