Trump’s agreement with Manafort could equal obstruction, experts say

President Donald Trump’s legal team has acknowledged he maintained a joint defense agreement with Paul Manafort even though the embattled ex-campaign chief entered a cooperation deal with special counsel Robert Mueller — and experts say that highly unusual contract could be criminal.

Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s top lawyer in the special counsel probe, confirmed Wednesday that the president has been briefed on several occasions by Manafort’s lawyers about his cooperation with Mueller’s investigators as part of the plea deal he entered in September.

“They share with me the things that pertain to our part of the case,” Giuliani told The Associated Press.

The former New York mayor did not return repeated requests for further comment.

Former federal prosecutors say the communications between Manafort’s lawyers and Trump’s legal team could amount to obstruction of justice if Manafort’s side disclosed confidential information he had learned from his interviews with the special counsel.

Separately, legal experts said Trump’s legal team may have committed witness tampering if it discussed a possible presidential pardon for Manafort in exchange for his feeding information. Giuliani has continuously said the president hasn’t ruled out pardoning his former campaign head.

The possible illegality of the exchanges comes down to whether there was a dubious intent.

“If the whole purpose was to undermine the Mueller investigation and that was proven in some way, then that would be a violation of law,” Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor in Illinois, told the New York Daily News.

Such intent is hard to prove, Mariotti said, particularly since both sides would likely be hard pressed to testify against the other.

But experts agreed it’s legally possible for Mueller to subpoena Giuliani or Manafort attorney Kevin Downing to dig into what was discussed.

A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.