Rick Gates Pleads Guilty, Asks Judge For Spring Break Trip To Boston

Manafort left the campaign three months later after news reports that he had taken millions of dollars under the table for political consulting work in Ukraine. Yanukovych ultimately fled to Russian Federation. The charges against the pair don’t relate to any allegations of misconduct related to Trump’s campaign, though Mueller is continuing to investigate potential ties to the Kremlin.

The local prosecutor issued subpoenas a year ago to lenders including Federal Savings Bank of Chicago, a small bank that provided millions in loans to Manafort, Reuters has reported.

But the 37-page document describes an intricate scheme meant to evade US taxes and finance luxury lifestyles. “Manafort, with Gates’s help, laundered more than $30 million in income that he had concealed from the U.S. Treasury Department and Justice Department, they said”. In Thursday’s indictments, Manafort and Gates apparently continued hiding their scheme, via offshore accounts in places like Cyprus and the Seychelles, through late 2017.

“The government has secured substantial evidence that Manafort secured this mortgage from The Federal Savings Bank through a series of false and fraudulent representations to The Federal Savings Bank”, the filing said, adding that Mr. Manafort gave the bank “doctored” financial statements for his company for 2015 and 2016 in which he overstated its income by millions of dollars.

When asked by the FBI, Mr Gates claimed that Ukraine was not discussed, and that he was not preparing a report for Ukraine’s leadership, according to the indictment.

At a condo on Howard Street in Manhattan, Manafort applied for a $3.4 million loan from another lender. He used it as an investment property, generating thousands in payments from Airbnb, the indictment said.

“There’d be no anxiety here”, a spokesperson told CNN last week. Gates then turned it into a Word document, the indictment says.

Not every attempt at fraud worked, according to the indictment.

Gates served as the campaign’s deputy chairman and is a close associate of Paul Manafort, the former chairman and a subject of intense scrutiny in the Russian Federation investigation.

The new charges come as Gates’ legal strategy and defense team are in flux.

A sealed charge in the case this week as well as closed-door discussions in recent weeks had brought speculation that a plea deal for Gates or some other development might be near.

“The effect is the public humiliation, which at this moment seems like a small price to pay for what our children would have to endure otherwise”, Gates said in his letter. A new lawyer, Thomas Green, entered an appearance Thursday on his behalf.

Both Manafort and Gates visited the federal courthouse in Washington on Tuesday without their lawyers for reasons that are still unclear.

In a statement released after the news of Gates’ plea, Manafort continues to maintain his innocence.

The latest developments in Mueller’s Russian Federation investigation also follow a guilty plea from a London-based lawyer, Alex van der Zwaan, who was an associate of Gates. Van der Zwaan admitted to lying to investigators about his contacts with Gates.