Manafort plea - Part 9

Where do they go from here regarding what Paul Manafort knows?

[M]uch of the substantive cooperation that Mueller’s investigators were seeking from Manafort may already have been obtained just in the last week. The plea agreement discloses that Manafort began talking to investigators on September 10, 2018, and signed a proffer agreement the following day. (A proffer agreement is a formal agreement that facilitates prosecutors and a defendant discussing the substance of a guilty plea.) In other words, the plea agreement strongly implies that Manafort sat down with FBI agents and prosecutors for several “proffer sessions” over the four days that preceded his appearance in court on Friday. A defendant has no incentive to hide the truth in proffer sessions because prosecutors cannot use truthful statements during the sessions to bring new charges, while — as Manafort’s erstwhile partner Rick Gates experienced firsthand — lying to prosecutors in a proffer session may lead to new felony charges. While much more testimony and interrogation lies ahead for Manafort, both to the special counsel and other U.S. attorney offices, there is a good chance that Mueller’s investigators have already learned much of what they needed from him.

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[T]he revelation that Manafort has been talking to investigators for days would make a politically explosive pardon less attractive to the White House.

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The charges Manafort has faced thus far have generally avoided addressing his work on the Trump campaign, and the statement of the offense reflects that same approach.

  Yahoo

But his plea deal does include the requirement that he testify truthfully in any other cases the prosecution may ask him to, including Grand Jury testimony, and cooperate fully in all aspects of the investigation, including providing documentation. Trump is not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination.

[T]here are two good reasons to believe that the campaign and election meddling are very important aspects of Manafort’s anticipated cooperation.

First, an important moment from Manafort’s trial in Virginia suggests that an ongoing investigation of the Trump campaign is very much underway. During the trial, a defense attorney cross-examining Gates, Manafort’s partner, asked whether Mueller’s investigators had posed questions to him about his time on Trump’s campaign. That cross-examination question prompted an immediate objection from Greg Andres, the lead prosecutor in the Virginia trial, which brought lawyers into a confidential sidebar conference with the judge. The government later filed a motion to seal that sidebar conference on the grounds that “substantive evidence pertaining to an ongoing investigation was revealed,” and the judge agreed.

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Second, Mueller’s office has by now established a track record of referring cases that do not clearly relate to his central investigative mission to other jurisdictions, even when they involve Trump and his campaign.

So why did the Special Counsel’s Office keep the prosecution of Manafort (and Gates) for itself? The best answer is because Manafort (and Gates) have important but not yet public roles in Mueller’s Russia investigation as it will play out in coming weeks and months.