{"id":15093,"date":"2018-09-14T19:24:59","date_gmt":"2018-09-14T19:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15093"},"modified":"2018-09-14T19:24:59","modified_gmt":"2018-09-14T19:24:59","slug":"ex-trump-campaign-aide-manafort-to-cooperate-with-russia-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=15093","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Trump campaign aide Manafort to cooperate with Russia probe"},"content":{"rendered":"
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US President Donald Trump<\/a>‘s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has pleaded guilty to two federal crimes after cutting a deal with prosecutors and agreeing to cooperate with the special counsel’s Russia probe.<\/p>\n

The move allows him to avoid a second criminal trial and ends Manafort’s more than year-long fight against investigators in the Russia investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The plea deal requires him to cooperate “fully and truthfully” with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump’s campaign worked with Moscow to influence the 2016 presidential election.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Manafort’s guilty plea comes less than a month after the 69-year-old was convicted<\/a> of eight financial crimes in separate trial in Virginia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Charges tied to Ukraine work<\/h2>\n

Under the terms of Friday’s plea deal, prosecutors dropped the bulk of the charges against Manafort, filing new paperwork that includes just two charges: conspiracy against the United States and conspiracy to obstruct justice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The charges do not relate to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which is a central issue in the special counsel’s investigation into possible contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This is for conduct that dates back many years and everybody should remember that,” Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The counts derived from Manafort’s work for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Moscow political party between around 2005 and 2015.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Prosecutors say Manafort acted illegally as a lobbyist for Yanukovych and earned tens of millions of dollars, which he laundered through Cyprus and other offshore banking locations and did not pay taxes on.<\/p>\n

The indictment said he laundered more than $30m into the United States<\/a> to by properties and luxury goods and “cheated the United States out of over $15 million in taxes”.<\/p>\n

Manafort could eventually be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison as a part of the deal, and will forfeit four real estate properties worth millions of dollars, as well as bank accounts and a life insurance policy.<\/p>\n

The former Trump aide has aggressively fought the charges against him and taken shots at his co-defendant, Rick Gates, who cut a plea deal with prosecutors earlier this year that included a cooperation agreement.<\/p>\n

‘Absolutely nothing to do with Trump’<\/h2>\n

Trump has denied any collusion with the Russians by his campaign and has long denounced the special counsel’s investigation as a political witch-hunt. Moscow denies US intelligence agency allegations that it interfered in the political process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Friday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the Manafort case has nothing to do with Trump.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“This has absolutely nothing to do with the president or his victorious 2016 presidential campaign,” she said. “It is totally unrelated.”<\/p>\n

Rudy Giuliani,<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Trump’s lawyer, said in a statement that “the president did nothing wrong”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“One again an investigation has concluded with a plea having nothing to do with President Trump or the Trump campaign.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Possible Trump pardon?\u00a0<\/h2>\n

It was not immediately clear what Manafort’s cooperation with the special counsel will provide to the Russia investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Manafort was most notably present at a meeting held by campaign executives<\/a>, including Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr and son-in-law Jared Kushner, with a Russian lawyer who had offered them “dirt” on Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. That meeting is now a focus of the Mueller investigation.<\/p>\n

Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington, DC, called Friday’s plea deal “a critical development”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Now, Trump’s son-in-law says they didn’t get any dirt. Well, is that true? Paul Manafort would know if that’s true,” Culhane said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She also noted that Manafort was the most prominent former Trump associate to plead guilty to crimes and agree to cooperate with the special counsel’s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Giuliani told 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.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s not going to hurt him if he pleads guilty. Usually it helps you get a pardon down the road. It shows you\u2019ve admitted your guilt,” he said before a deal was announced.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump has repeatedly spoken out in Manafort’s defence – while also seeking to distance himself from his onetime associate, saying in June that he “came into the campaign very late and was with us for a short period of time”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family,” he tweeted in August, one day after Manafort was convicted of the eight financial charges.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The president drew a comparison <\/span><\/span>to his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, who on the same day as the Manafort conviction pleaded guilty<\/a> to campaign finance violations and other charges.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Unlike Michael Cohen, he [Manafort] refused to ‘break’ – make up stories in order to get a ‘deal’,” Trump wrote at the time. “Such respect for a brave man!”\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has pleaded guilty to two federal crimes after cutting a deal with prosecutors and agreeing to cooperate with the special counsel’s Russia probe. The move allows him to avoid a second criminal trial and ends Manafort’s more than year-long fight against investigators in the Russia investigation.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":15094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}