Why Donald Trump may fear new deal

“He did so knowingly, intentionally and willfully”, Weissmann said.

Any plea agreement must have followed a “proffer”, a formal declaration by Manafort or his attorneys about the scope of the information he would be able to provide the prosecutors. And if what he delivers is worthwhile, then prosecutors can urge the sentencing judge to reduce Manafort’s sentence for his service to greater justice.

Before Manafort pleaded guilty, Weissmann gave a 40-minute description of the criminal conduct in the case.

“If the president or his team were dangling a pardon in conversations with Manafort, that would go to the issue of obstruction of justice as well”, Schiff said.

Later in 2016, Manafort oversaw the Republican National Convention that nominated Trump for the presidency.

“The decision by Manafort to provide evidence in exchange for leniency on sentencing is a stunning development in the long-running probe into whether any Trump associates may have conspired with Russian Federation to influence the 2016 election”, reported The Washington Post.

“Manafort is a key person to help us unwind whether this is the most unlikely string of improbable coincidences or whether this is an active conspiracy”, Schiff said on the NBC program, according to USA Today.

But what Manafort might have to offer Mueller about the Trump campaign is not publicly unknown, although prosecutors only dropped some charges against Manafort after hearing in advance what he had to say. While the platform was being drafted, Trump campaign officials stepped in to block a provision about arming Ukraine to fight Russian-backed militias.

Under the terms of the deal, Manafort faces a possible maximum prison sentence of about 10 years, though that doesn’t include any likely sentence for his conviction last month in Virginia.

Trump himself has not yet addressed the plea directly.

In August, after Cohen pleaded guilty, Trump praised Manafort for refusing to “break”, suggesting that Manafort holding strong was very much in his interest.

“Between at least 2006 and 2015, Manafort conspired with Richard W. Gates (Gates), Konstantin Kilimnik (Kilimnik), and others to act, and acted, as unregistered agents of a foreign government and political party”.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders noted that point in a statement responding to the development.

“This has absolutely nothing to do with the president or his victorious 2016 presidential campaign”, she said.

But while the White House projected confidence about its position, some officials privately acknowledged that they could not be sure what Manafort might expose about the campaign or about interactions with Russians.

He was among the participants, for instance, in a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians and Trump’s oldest son and son-in-law that was arranged for the campaign to receive derogatory information about Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump’s time in office is running out now that former campaign manager Paul Manafort has flipped and is cooperating with Russian Federation investigators, a Democratic strategist predicts. In his deal with the special counsel, he agreed to “broad” cooperation and to participate in “interviews, briefings, producing documents, testifying in other matters”. Manafort could shed more light on how those Russian contacts came about, what they amounted to, and what kind of cooperation, if any, actually took place.

But Starr cautioned that cooperating witnesses in deals like this do not always end up giving the prosecutor what they had hoped for. The feds obtain guilty pleas in more than 95% of the cases they bring because they are extremely careful to bring charges in only the strongest of cases. “It would not surprise me if he got time served for both cases”, Allenbaugh said.

The nature of Manafort’s deal, however, may mean that the pardon ship has sailed. Roger Stone has certainly been a very real focus of Mueller’s recently, and he has said he’s preparing to be charged.

Giuliani told the Reuters news agency on Friday that a guilty plea to avoid a second trial would not crush Manafort’s chances of receiving an eventual presidential pardon.