Plea puts more heat on Manafort in investigation

Connecticut native Paul Manafort’s onetime junior business partner, Rick Gates, pleaded guilty Friday in federal court to conspiracy and making false statements involving the pair’s laundering of more than $75 million through offshore accounts.

The plea sets up Manafort’s chief protégé as a potential key witness against the New Britainraised scion of a prominent family deeply involved in Republican politics there.

Gates, 45, entered the plea in a brief appearance at U.S. District Court in Washington Friday afternoon.

His plea comes on the heel of a 32-count indictment Thursday, which detailed a scheme to disguise millions paid to both men by Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions on behalf of that nation’s former president, Victor Yanukovych, who was driven from power in 2014 and replaced by a proWestern president.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating Gates and Manafort as part of the ongoing probe of possibly illegal links between the 2016 campaign of President Donald Trump and Russians, aimed at bolstering Trump’s electoral prospects by denigrating Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

It is not clear what, if any, relevance the widening case against Manafort has to the broader question of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign and collusion with the election campaign — and perhaps Trump himself — in doing so.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, DConn., suggested the possible cooperation of Gates with the Mueller investigation might ultimately lead investigators straight to the White House.

“Securing a guilty plea from Rick Gates, Paul Manafort’s righthand man, is a significant step forward for the special counsel’s investigation,” said Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary

Committee that is also investigating the TrumpRussia connection and possible obstruction of justice by the president. “Special counsel Mueller is clearly pursuing a longstanding prosecution strategy — collecting convictions as he climbs the ladder of criminal culpability — and potentially paving a path to the White House.”

Manafort served as Trump’s campaign manager between March and October of 2016. Gates was his deputy in the campaign, and went on to hold a position on Trump’s inaugural committee.

Manafort insists he committed no crime.

“Notwithstanding that

Rick Gates pled today, I continue to maintain my innocence,” Manafort said in a statement relayed by his spokesman, Jason Maloni. “I 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.”

Manafort added: “This does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue, piled-up charges contained in the indictments against me.”

Trump did not respond Friday to a shouted question about the Gates plea.

Mueller’s court filings alleged a scheme to launder money that Manafort and Gates received for their Ukraine consulting work. The document filed Friday

accuses Manafort of using his “hidden overseas wealth to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the United States, without paying taxes on that income.”

The filing further states Manafort laundered $18 million to “buy property, goods and services” in the U.S.

It details $12 million of direct payments, mostly from an offshore account in Cyprus, to unnamed vendors in the U.S. to cover Manafort’s expenses — $5.4 million to a Long Island home improvement company; $934,350 to an antique rug dealer in Alexandria, Va.; $849,215 to a men’s clothing store in New York; $520,440 to a clothing store in Beverley Hills, Calif.; and $177,405 for the purchase of four Range Rovers and a Mercedes Benz.

Another focus of the case against Manafort is his failure to register as an agent of a foreign government for lobbying on behalf of Yanukovych and the Party of Regions in the U.S.

A superseding indictment issued Thursday states that Manafort’s overseas accounts paid $6.4 million for properties in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Arlington, Va. After Yanukovych was thrown out of office and Ukraine business dried up in 2015 and 2016, Manafort fraudulently secured $20 million in loans with the properties as collateral, the indictment charges.

Manafort and Gates both pleaded not guilty to charges in the initial indictment in October.

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