“These types of agreements are very common in mob and street-gang cases,” said Elie Honig, a former assistant U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted more than 100 members and associates of La Cosa Nostra. “I’ve seen some joint-defense agreements with 20 participants … It enables and facilitates all defendants to get together and say, ‘Let’s get our ducks in a row.’ And, strategically, it enables all the different defendants and targets in a case to get together, work out what they’re going to say, and get on the same page so as not to implicate each other.”

Manafort’s legal exposure is not limited to his bank records and foreign lobbying, two matters for which charges have already been brought against him. He ran the Trump campaign for nearly five months at the height of the election, and he attended a meeting in June 2016 with Russian nationals offering dirt on Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. That meeting is of particular interest to Mueller, who has been investigating a potential conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to undermine Clinton’s candidacy. Trump’s story about the meeting has changed several times already, and WikiLeaks dumped Democratic National Committee emails that had been stolen by Russia just over one month later. Manafort also appeared to offer the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska private briefings about the campaign in exchange for debt relief, and he received emails from the Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos offering to set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Manafort’s pursuit of foreign cash and shady deals laid the groundwork for the corruption of Washington.

The recently revealed agreement “is an indication by both Trump and Manafort that their interests are aligned,” explained the former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Cramer. It may also give Manafort “another way to demonstrate his loyalty to Team Trump,” said Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor who was part of the team that convicted the Gambino crime boss John Gotti. It “suggests that Manafort may be signaling to the Trump team that he wants to still be thought of as one of them, and so is willing to share the evidence he gets to see as he prepares for his trials.”



Trump’s and Manafort’s lawyers can share as much or as little as they’d like under the agreement, which can be either written or unwritten, lawyers told me. Trump, whose deal with Manafort may make him more privy to evidence in the Russia investigation than was previously known, has repeatedly called for the probe to be shut down and has praised Manafort for refusing to cooperate with Mueller. (A spokesman for Manafort did not return a request for comment.)

According to the journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear, Manafort is not alone in having a deal with Trump. Thirty-seven witnesses who have been called to testify so far in the Mueller inquiry are part of a joint-defense agreement with the president, which allows them to share details about what they told the special counsel. Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal attorney and fixer, also had an agreement with Trump, but he backed out earlier this summer when he decided to cooperate with New York prosecutors.