Paul Manafort throws new uncertainty in Russia probe

WASHINGTON — The breakdown of a plea deal with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and an explosive British news report about alleged contacts he may have had with WikiLeaks founder

Julian Assange threw a new element of uncertainty into the Trump-Russia investigation on Tuesday.

A day after prosecutors accused Manafort of repeatedly lying to them, trashing his agreement to tell all in return for a lighter sentence, he adamantly denied a report in the Guardian that he had met secretly with Assange in March 2016. That’s the same month he joined the Trump campaign and that Russian hackers began an effort to penetrate the email accounts of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The developments thrust Manafort back into the investigation spotlight, raising new questions about what he knows and what prosecutors say he might be attempting to conceal as they probe Russian election interference and any possible coordination with Trump associates in the campaign that sent the celebrity businessman to the White House.

At the same time, other figures entangled in the investigation, including Trump himself, have been scrambling to escalate attacks and allegations against prosecutors who have spent weeks working quietly behind the scenes.

Besides denying he’d ever met Assange, Manafort, who is currently in jail, said he’d told special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors the truth in weeks of questioning. And WikiLeaks said Manafort had never met with Assange, offering to bet London’s Guardian newspaper “a million dollars and its editor’s head.”

Assange, whose organization published thousands of emails stolen from Clinton’s campaign in 2016, is in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London under a claim of asylum.

It is unclear what prosecutors contend Manafort lied about, though they’re expected to make a public filing ahead of sentencing that could offer answers.

Dissolution of the plea deal could be a devastating outcome for a defendant who suddenly admitted guilt last September after months of maintaining his innocence and who bet on his cooperation getting him a shorter sentence. But it’s also a potentially major setback for investigators given that Manafort steered the campaign during a vital stretch of 2016.