Gates pleads guilty to two crimes
WASHINGTON – Special counsel
Robert Mueller enlisted the cooperation of a former aide to President Donald Trump’s campaign Friday when
Rick Gates pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI.
He promised to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Gates and Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort were indicted in October on charges that they secretly worked on behalf of a pro-Russian
political faction in Ukraine and laundered $4 million in payments through overseas bank accounts.
Prosecutors added 32 counts this week, revealing another indictment accusing the two of lying to obtain millions of dollars in bank loans and laundering more than $30 million through overseas accounts to pay for real estate and luxury goods while evading U.S. taxes.
Gates’s abrupt guilty plea and his promise to cooperate intensify legal pressure on Manafort, who participated in some of the episodes that have drawn the attention of investigators, including a 2016 meeting between Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer offering damaging information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Mueller’s office revealed yet another indictment of Manafort late Friday afternoon. The new charges accuse him of secretly enlisting a group of “former senior European politicians” to advocate on behalf of the pro-Russian faction he represented in Ukraine. Prosecutors said Manafort wired the unnamed officials more than 2 million euros from his offshore accounts.
Gates pleaded guilty Friday to charges that he conspired to defraud the United States by hiding the money he and Manafort earned working in Ukraine. And he pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents during a meeting three weeks ago, months after he was first indicted.
Gates admitted lying about what was said at a 2013 meeting between Manafort and an unidentified member of Congress.
“Guilty, your honor,” Gates told U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson in a packed second-floor courtroom in Washington.
Jackson said Gates faces between 57 and 71 months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, but he might serve less time depending on the extent of his cooperation with prosecutors. Jackson said Gates can remain free until he is sentenced.
Asked how he felt while leaving the courthouse after the plea, Gates smiled and said, “Very good.”
Gates is the fifth person to plead guilty to a federal crime in Mueller’s investigation and the third Trump campaign aide who has publicly promised to cooperate with investigators.
Prosecutors also have secured guilty pleas from Trump’s former national security adviser Mike Flynn and a campaign foreign policy aide, George Papadopoulos, who said in court documents that he met with a person he thought was tied to the Russian government who was offering “dirt” on Clinton.
Manafort said in a statement Friday that Gates’s plea “does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges.”
He said he had “hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise.”