Paul Manafort pleaded guilty on Friday to two counts of conspiracy against the United States, telling a court he will cooperate with Robert Mueller's investigation and agreeing to meet with the special counsel team without an attorney

The stunning development that Manafort will assist prosecutors who went after him on a raft of money laundering and tax charges follows a series of earlier indications that Manafort would not cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller.

His cooperation, depending on the extent of it, could provide prosecutors with a valuable tool as they forge ahead with the Russia probe.

Manafort faces up to 10 years in prison for the charges. As part of his plea agreement, Manafort also agreed to forfeit five properties he owned in New York, including his apartment at Trump Tower and his sprawling estate in the Hamptons.

In addition, he will give up a brownstone he owned in Brooklyn, New York, his SoHo, Manhattan, condo, and an apartment in Chinatown. He must also forfeit two bank accounts at Federal Savings Bank and an account at Capital One.

Guilty: This is the moment Paul Manafort stood to accept his guilt at the Washington D.C. federal court hearing presided over by Judge Amy Berman Jackson

In court: Paul Manafort sat and listened as attorney Richard Westling addressed the judge

Kathleen Manafort arrives at court as her husband prepares to plead guilty to federal charges

WHAT'S THE DEAL? Trump tweeted weeks ago that Manafort refused to 'break' in order to get a 'deal.' On Friday he reached a cooperation agreement with prosecutors

Manafort appeared to be in good spirits, flashing a wide grin when he walked into the D.C. federal courtroom wearing a black suit and dark purple tie.

He exchanged no glances with his wife, Kathleen, who sat in the second row and looked unemotional as prosecutors read off the accusations against her husband.

The charges included allegations that Manafort lied to the Department of Justice about his work for a foreign government and that he obstructed justice by attempting to influence potential witnesses in the case.

When Judge Amy Berman Jackson asked Manafort if this was a 'true and accurate statement of what you did in this case,' Manafort replied, 'It is.'

The former Trump campaign chairman pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy against the United States, charges that carry a maximum of five years in prison each. The judge noted that these sentences could not be served concurrently.

Guilty: Paul Manafort, 69, will stay behind bars awaiting sentencing, and faces up to 10 years in prison

He will also face up to three years of supervised release on each count and a maximum $250,000 fine on each count.

Judge Jackson said she will wait to sentence Manafort until she receives a report on the sentencing guidelines from the Probation office. She will also allow on both sides to file objections if they wish to do so.

She also told Manafort that the law will require her sentencing guidelines to be more severe because his actions involved money laundering, obstruction of justice, and off-shore accounts and other 'sophisticated means.'

She said the enhanced guidelines would mean Manafort should face between 210 and 262 months in prison – an amount of time that would have to be capped due to the 10 year maximum sentence.

Judge Jackson also noted that Manafort would not be eligible for parole because it has been abolished for federal cases.

Manafort's defense team agreed that the statutory 10-year maximum 'would be reasonable in this case.' Prosecutors will still have a chance to file a motion asking for a lower sentence, and this could depend on the extent of Manafort's cooperation with the special counsel's office.

Judge Jackson gave attorneys on both sides 60 days to return to file a joint status report in the case.

WHITE HOUSE RESPONDS: 'MANAFORT'S CASE IS NOTHING TO DO TRUMP'

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders issued a statement following the bombshell development in court.

'This had absolutely nothing to do with the President or his victorious 2016 Presidential campaign. It is totally unrelated,' Sanders said.

This had absolutely nothing to do with the President or his victorious 2016 Presidential campaign. It is totally unrelated.' - White House press secretary Sarah Sanders

A cooperation agreement would bind Manafort to answering questions from prosecutors about the gamut of questions about what he knows as they pursue their probe of Russian election interference in the elections and connections between President Donald Trump's team and Russians.

Manafort attended the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russian in June of 2016 that got set up after a British music publicist reached out to Donald Trump Jr. after getting an offer of dirt on Hillary Clinton.

MANAFORT LOSES TRUMP TOWER PAD AND FACES 10 YEARS IN PRISON

Manafort also will be required to forfeit assets as part of the plea. Prosecutors say he deprived taxpayers of $15 million and laundered $30 million in assets. Manafort used overseas income to purchase homes in the U.S., then took out millions in bank loans to fund purchases here without declaring the money as income.

He faces up to ten years in jail.

Manafort also agreed to forfeit five properties he owned in New York, including his apartment at Trump Tower and his sprawling estate in the Hamptons.

In addition, he will give up a Brownstone he owned in Brooklyn, his SoHo condo, and an apartment in Chinatown. He must also forfeit two bank accounts at Federal Savings Bank and an account at Capital One.

Manafort also owns a home in Alexandria Virginia and a home in Florida.

Manafort bought his upper-floor apartment in Trump Tower in November 2006, using an LLC he controlled called John Hannah LLC. Public records show a purchase price of $3.675 million.

Manafort will give up a Trump Tower apartment with an original of purchase price of $3.675 million

Seized: Paul Manafort loses his brownstone in Brooklyn's upscale Carroll Gardens and his loft in Manhattan's trendy SoHo, which he rented out on AirBnB

Seized: Paul Manafort will lose his lavish Hamptons estate which his first trial had heard was where he spent a fortune on gardening and even karaoke equipment

Keeping: Manafort's wife Katherine will still have use of the Alexandria, VA condo, which was raided by the FBI acting for Mueller's probe

MANAFORT'S WIFE SHOWS NO EMOTION AS SHE WATCHES HIM FLIP

While in court, Manafort appeared to be in good spirits, flashing a wide grin when he walked into the D.C. federal courtroom wearing a black suit and dark purple tie.

He exchanged no glances with his wife, Kathleen, who sat in the second row and looked unemotional as prosecutors read off the accusations against her husband.

When Judge Amy Jackson asked Manafort if this was a 'true and accurate statement of what you did in this case,' Manafort replied, 'It is.'

The former Trump campaign chairman pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy against the United States, charges that carry a maximum of five years in prison each. The judge noted that these sentences could not be served concurrently.

He will also face up to three years of supervised release on each count and a maximum $250,000 fine on each count.

Judge Jackson said she will wait to sentence Manafort until she receives a report on the sentencing guidelines from the Probation office. She will also allow on both sides to file objections if they wish to do so.

She also told Manafort that the law will require her sentencing guidelines to be more severe because his actions involved money laundering, obstruction of justice, and off-shore accounts and other 'sophisticated means.'

She said the enhanced guidelines would mean Manafort should face between 210 and 262 months in prison – an amount of time that would have to be capped due to the 10 year maximum sentence.

Judge Jackson also noted that Manafort would not be eligible for parole because it has been abolished for federal cases.

Manafort's defense team agreed that the statutory 10-year maximum 'would be reasonable in this case.' Prosecutors will still have a chance to file a motion asking for a lower sentence, and this could depend on the extent of Manafort's cooperation with the special counsel's office.

Judge Jackson gave attorneys on both sides 60 days to return to file a joint status report in the case.

'Once again an investigation is concluded with a plea having nothing to do with President Trump or the Trump campaign. The reason: the president did nothing wrong,' Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said in a statement, CNN reported.

MANAFORT'S ATTORNEY: HE DID IT FOR HIS FAMILY

Manafort attorney Kevin Downing told reporters: 'He's accepted responsibility. And he wanted to make sure that his family was able to remain safe and live a good life. He's accepted responsibility and this is for conduct that dates back many years, and everybody should remember that,' he said.

Even as Hurricane Florence battered the East Coast, Trump was briefed by his legal team on the bombshell developments Friday.

Under the terms of the agreement revealed by Judge Amy Berman Jackson, Manafort has agreed to submit to further interviews with the special counsel, share documents in his possession, testify in other court proceedings, and waive his right to have a lawyer present during interviews, CNN reported.

Charges where a Virginia jury deadlocked would go away, but only following 'successful cooperation,' according to Judge Jackson. He would serve no more than 10 years in jail, and he will remain incarcerated.

He's accepted responsibility. And he wanted to make sure that his family was able to remain safe and live a good life' - Manafort attorney Kevin Downing

The deal not only spares Manafort the expense of a second trial – it spares Trump the spectacle of another court proceeding of his former campaign chair in the weeks before the November elections.

'Is what the prosecutor just said a true and accurate description of what you did in this case?' Judge Jackson asked him.

'I did. It is,' he replied.

An earlier indictment laid out how Manafort lied to get home loans and then used properties to harvest cash.

He 'falsely represented the amount of debt he had by failing to disclose on his loan application the existence of' another mortgage on his Union Street [a $3 million townhouse in Brooklyn] home, for example,' according to the indictment.

When the document [a loan application] was first submitted to Lender B, a conspirator working at Lender B replied: 'Looks Dr'd. Can't someone just do a clean excel doc and pdf to me??' A subsequent version was submitted to the bank,' according to prosecutors.

Statement: Kevin Downing, Paul Manafort's attorney, spoke outside the court to say that his client's guilty plea was for the sake of his family

Taking a tumble: TV cameraman Chris Plater fell while filming Kevin Downing after the attorney had made his statement

The cooperation deal comes after Manafort has already been convicted of federal crimes in a Virginia courthouse, and faces sentencing. It follows speculation that Manafort was following a different path, potentially pursuing a simple guilty plea or even seeking a pardon from Trump.

Prosecutors filed a new superseding indictment against Paul Manafort Friday, as the former Donald Trump campaign chair agreed to plead guilty to federal crimes.

Manafort appeared in court Friday morning in what Special Robert Mueller's office announced was an arraignment and plea agreement hearing that began around 11:00 am.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office sent out the new superseding criminal information laying out a series of charges against Manafort Friday morning.

New exhibits contained in the indictment show Manafort pushing an 'action plan' to go on 'offense' and show 'what Ukraine is doing' – actions that would appear to indicate a U.S. lobbying effort.

Also included is a 2010 memo Manafort wrote to pro-Russian Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovich touting a 'Public and Government Relations program' Manafort said he created.

MANAFORT'S JAW-DROPPING MEMOS: HE WROTE ABOUT 'OBAMA'S JEWS'

One newly revealed document showed Manafort 'orchestrated a scheme to have …'[O]bama jews' put pressure on the administration' to support Yanukovych and 'disavow' his rival, Tymoshenko.

This involved putting out stories that 'a senior Cabinet official' who previously criticized Yanukovych 'was supporting anti-Semitism because the official supported Tymoshenko, who in turn had formed a political alliance with a Ukraine party that espoused anti-Semitic views.'

The government charged Manafort 'coordinated privately with a senior Israeli government official' to issue a statement publicizing the story.

'I have someone pushing it on the NY Post. Bada bing bada boom,' he wrote.

He sought to have the administration 'understand that 'the Jewish community will take this out on Obama on election day if he does nothing,' according to prosecutors.

The New York Times reported that prosecutors charged Manafort with one count of conspiracy and another of conspiracy to obstruct justice – a charge related to witness tampering in the case. The times reported they were dropping five charges dealing with money laundering and lobby disclosure violations.

However the superseding indictment stated Manafort failed to register as a foreign agent, laundered funds, and hid Ukrainian payments that reached $60 million.

Manafort was convicted on eight counts in his first trial last month, and was said to be discussing a plea deal ahead of the second trial - which he has now made

Typically in such cases the defendant must admit to all of the charges against him, even if he does not plead guilty to all the charges.

A plea allows Manafort to avoid a trial in Washington, D.C. Manafort has already been convicted in a federal court in Virginia.

A hearing set for Friday morning was pushed back to 11:00 am, signaling last minute maneuverings in the case.

Manafort's criminal indictment was changed to a plea agreement, special counsel Peter Carr told the Post Friday morning.

The Special Counsel's office released an official statement Friday that did not yet confirm the guilty plea.

'A superseding criminal information against Paul J. Manafort, Jr., 69, of Alexandria, Va., has been filed today in the District of Columbia, which alleges a conspiracy against the United States (money laundering, tax fraud, failing to file Foreign Bank Account Reports, violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and lying and misrepresenting to the Department of Justice) and a conspiracy to obstruct justice (witness tampering),' according to Mueller's office.

'Additional information will be provided in the near future.'

RUDY'S ALREADY CLAIMED TRUMP IS RELAXED ABOUT PLEA DEAL

Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani had earlier told Politico the president isn't worried about Manafort possibly accepting a plea.

Manafort was scheduled to go on trial in D.C. on September 17, on charges including money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent. Jury selection begins that day with opening arguments to follow a week later.

Before the deal emerged, Giuliani said: 'We can see a reason why he might want to do that. What's the need for another trial?

'They've got enough to put him in jail. His lawyer is going to argue they shouldn't. The judge should decide this. Not Mueller. I think it's pretty clear if they were going to get anything from him, they'd have gotten it already.

'What's the point of further harassing him?'

Manafort was found guilty on eight counts of tax and bank fraud at an August trial in Virginia court. He has yet to be sentenced.

Trump and his team are unconcerned about a possible plea deal, Giuliani said, because they're convinced Manafort has no damaging info on the president.

'From our perspective, we want him to do the right thing for himself,' Giuliani said. 'There's no fear that Paul Manafort would cooperate against the president because there's nothing to cooperate about and we long ago evaluated him as an honorable man.'

A plea deal could benefit Trump in that it would keep Manafort and the Russia investigation out of the news ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.

And, given the nature of the charges he was convicted on in Virginia, at 69 Manafort could be facing life in prison simply from those convictions.

Even though Manafort's charges stem from his lobbying business and not his campaign work for Trump, the prosecution came from the Mueller probe of Russia's election meddling.

And Manafort was part of the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting where he, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Giuliani confirmed that Trump's legal team and Manafort's are in regular contact and that they are part of a joint defense agreement that allows confidential information sharing.

Such an agreement would allow frequent communication between the two men's lawyers. Those contacts could inform Manafort's decision-making as he weights whether to make a deal, whether to cooperate, and whether he believes he is likely to secure a presidential pardon.

Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani said the president isn't worried about Paul Manafort possibly flipping

The president has expressed sympathy for Manafort, unlike his reaction to his former personal attorney Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to eight counts the same day Manafort was convicted.

'I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family,' Trump tweeted after the Virginia trial's verdict. 'Justice' took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to 'break' - make up stories in order to get a 'deal.' Such respect for a brave man!'

There has been speculation the president could pardon Manafort, which the president has not tamped down.

He has praised his former campaign chairman for not flipping.

'One of the reasons I respect Paul Manafort so much is he went through that trial — you know they make up stories. People make up stories. This whole thing about flipping, they call it, I know all about flipping,' Trump told 'Fox & Friends' last month.

'It's called flipping, and it almost ought to be illegal. ... For 30, 40 years I've been watching flippers. Everything's wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they — they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go.'

Mueller's final tally: Trump's inner circle of convicts and turncoats - and 25 wanted Russian trolls GUILTY: MICHAEL FLYNN Pleaded guilty to making false statements in December 2017. Awaiting sentence Flynn was President Trump's former National Security Advisor and Robert Mueller's most senior scalp to date. He previously served when he was a three star general as President Obama's director of the Defense Intelligence Agency but was fired. He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about his conversations with a Russian ambassador in December 2016. He has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel investigation. GUILTY AND JAILED: MICHAEL COHEN Pleaded guilty to eight counts including fraud and two campaign finance violations in August 2018. Pleaded guilty to further count of lying to Congress in November 2018. Sentenced to three years in prison and $2 million in fines and forfeitures in December 2018 Cohen was investigated by Mueller but the case was handed off to the Southern District of New York,leaving Manhattan's ferocious and fiercely independent federal prosecutors to run his case. Cohen was Trump's longtime personal attorney, starting working for him and the Trump Organization in 2007. He is the longest-serving member of Trump's inner circle to be implicated by Mueller. Cohen professed unswerving devotion to Trump - and organized payments to silence two women who alleged they had sex with the-then candidate: porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. He admitted that payments to both women were felony campaign finance violations - and admitted that he acted at the 'direction' of 'Candidate-1': Donald Trump. He also admitted tax fraud by lying about his income from loans he made, money from taxi medallions he owned, and other sources of income, at a cost to the Treasury of $1.3 million. And he admitted lying to Congress in a rare use of the offense. The judge in his case let him report for prison on March 6 and recommended he serve it in a medium-security facility close to New York City. GUILTY AND JAILED: PAUL MANAFORT Found guilty of eight charges of bank and tax fraud in August 2018. Sentenced to 47 months in March 2019. Pleaded guilty to two further charges - witness tampering and conspiracy against the United States. Jailed for total of seven and a half years in two separate sentences. Additionally indicted for mortgage fraud by Manhattan District Attorney, using evidence previously presented by Mueller Manafort worked for Trump's campaign from March 2016 and chaired it from June to August 2016, overseeing Trump being adopted as Republican candidate at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. He is the most senior campaign official to be implicated by Mueller. Manafort was one of Washington D.C.'s longest-term and most influential lobbyists but in 2015, his money dried up and the next year he turned to Trump for help, offering to be his campaign chairman for free - in the hope of making more money afterwards. But Mueller unwound his previous finances and discovered years of tax and bank fraud as he coined in cash from pro-Russia political parties and oligarchs in Ukraine. Manafort pleaded not guilty to 18 charges of tax and bank fraud but was convicted of eight counts in August 2018. The jury was deadlocked on the other 10 charges. A second trial on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent due in September did not happen when he pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and witness tampering in a plea bargain. He was supposed to co-operate with Mueller but failed to. Minutes after his second sentencing hearing in March 2019, he was indicted on 16 counts of fraud and conspiracy by the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., using evidence which included documents previously presented at his first federal trial. The president has no pardon power over charges by district and state attorneys. GUILTY AND GOING TO WEEKEND JAIL: RICK GATES Pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and making false statements in February 2018. Sentenced to 45 days weekend jail and three years probation, December 17, 2018 Gates was Manafort's former deputy at political consulting firm DMP International. He admitted to conspiring to defraud the U.S. government on financial activity, and to lying to investigators about a meeting Manafort had with a member of congress in 2013. As a result of his guilty plea and promise of cooperation, prosecutors vacated charges against Gates on bank fraud, bank fraud conspiracy, failure to disclose foreign bank accounts, filing false tax returns, helping prepare false tax filings, and falsely amending tax returns. GUILTY AND JAILED: GEORGE PAPADOPOLOUS Pleaded guilty to making false statements in October 2017. Sentenced to 14 days in September 2018, and reported to prison in November. Served 12 days and released on December 7, 2018 Papadopoulos was a member of Donald Trump's campaign foreign policy advisory committee. He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about his contacts with London professor Josef Mifsud and Ivan Timofeev, the director of a Russian government-funded think tank. GUILTY AND JAILED: RICHARD PINEDO Pleaded guilty to identity fraud in February 2018. Sentenced to a year in prison Pinedo is a 28-year-old computer specialist from Santa Paula, California. He admitted to selling bank account numbers to Russian nationals over the internet that he had obtained using stolen identities. GUILTY AND JAILED: ALEX VAN DER ZWAAN Pleaded guilty to making false statements in February 2018. He served a 30-day prison sentence and was deported to the Netherlands on his release Van der Zwaan was a Dutch attorney for Skadden Arps who worked on a Ukrainian political analysis report for Paul Manafort in 2012. He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about when he last spoke with Rick Gates and Konstantin Kilimnik. His law firm say he was fired. GUILTY: W. SAMUEL PATTEN Pleaded guilty in August 2018 to failing to register as a lobbyist while doing work for a Ukrainian political party. Sentenced to three years probation April 2019 Patten, a long-time D.C. lobbyist was a business partner of Paul Manafort. He pleaded guilty to admitting to arranging an illegal $50,000 donation to Trump's inauguration. He arranged for an American 'straw donor' to pay $50,000 to the inaugural committee, knowing that it was actually for a Ukrainian businessman. Neither the American or the Ukrainian have been named. CHARGED: KONSTANTIN KILIMNIK Indicted for obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. At large, probably in Russia Kilimnik is a former employee of Manafort's political consulting firm and helped him with lobbying work in Ukraine. He is accused of witness tampering, after he allegedly contacted individuals who had worked with Manafort to remind them that Manafort only performed lobbying work for them outside of the U.S. He has been linked to Russian intelligence and is currently thought to be in Russia - effectively beyond the reach of extradition by Mueller's team. INDICTED: THE RUSSIANS Twenty-five Russian nationals and three Russian entities have been indicted for conspiracy to defraud the United States. They remain at large in Russia Two of these Russian nationals were also indicted for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 11 were indicted for conspiracy to launder money. Fifteen of them were also indicted for identity fraud. Vladimir Putin has ridiculed the charges. Russia effectively bars extradition of its nationals. The only prospect Mueller has of bringing any in front of a U.S. jury is if Interpol has their names on an international stop list - which is not made public - and they set foot in a territory which extradites to the U.S. INDICTED: MICHAEL FLYNN'S BUSINESS PARTNERS Bijan Kian (left), number two in now disgraced former national security adviser Mike Flynn's lobbying company, and the two's business partner Ekim Alptekin (right) were indicted for conspiracy to lobby illegally. Kian, an Iranian-American was arrested and appeared in court charged with a conspiracy to illegally lobby the U.S government without registering as a foreign agent. Their co-conspirator was Flynn, who is called 'Person A' in the indictment and is not charged, offering some insight into what charges he escaped with his plea deal. Kian, vice-president of Flynn's former lobbying firm, is alleged to have plotted with Alptekin to try to change U.S. policy on an exiled Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania and who is accused by Turkey's strongman president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of trying to depose him. Erdogan's government wanted him extradited from the U.S. and paid Flynn's firm through Alptekin for lobbying, including an op-ed in The Hill calling for Gulen to be ejected. Flynn and Kian both lied that the op-ed was not paid for by the Turkish government. The indictment is a sign of how Mueller is taking an interest in more than just Russian involvement in the 2016 election. GUILTY AND AWAITING SENTENCE: ROGER STONE Roger Stone, a former Trump campaign official and longtime informal advisor to Trump, was indited on seven counts including obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and lying to Congress about his communications with WikiLeaks in January 2019. Convicted on all counts November 15, 2019, awaiting sentence Stone was a person of interest to Mueller's investigators long before his January indictment, thanks in part due to his public pronouncements as well as internal emails about his contacts with WikiLeks. In campaign texts and emails, many of which had already been publicly revealed before showing up in Mueller's indictment, Stone communicated with associates about WikiLeaks following reports the organization had obtained a cache of Clinton-related emails. Stone, a former Nixon campaign adviser who has the disgraced former president's face permanently tattooed on his back, has long been portrayed as a central figure in the election interference scandal. 'They got nothing,' he said of the special counsel's investigation. Stone gave 'false and misleading' testimony about his requests for information from WikiLeaks. He then pressured a witness, comedian Randy Credico, to take the Fifth Amendment rather than testify, and pressured him in a series of emails. Following a prolonged dispute over testimony, he called him a 'rat' and threatened to 'take that dog away from you', in reference to Credico's pet, Bianca. Stone warned him: 'Let's get it on. Prepare to die.' CLEARED: GREG CRAIG Greg Craig, President Barack Obama's White House counsel, was indicted for failing to register as a foreign agent. Mueller's investigators uncovered Craig's work on behalf the government of Ukraine while probing Manafort, who did business with Craig. Prosecutors released a grand jury indictment of Craig in April 2019, after Craig's law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP agreed to pay more than $4.6 million as part of a settlement. The prominent firm also acknowledged it had failed to register, and placed much of the blame on Craig, a senior partner there. Craig's lawyer blasted the decision as an abuse of prosecutorial discretion, and prepared to argue that omission of information during an interview is not tantamount to making false statements. The charges stem from a 2012 report Craig and the firm produced on behalf of the Ukrainian government on opposition figure and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. She was an opponent of Manafort's client , former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Craig was cleared on September 9 2019. Advertisement

POLITICS, SEX, AND LIES: THE RISE AND FALL OF PAUL MANAFORT In the span of just two years, Paul Manafort has gone from one of Washington's most sought-after Republican lobbyists to a political pariah with a shattered family. 'My life - personally and professionally - is in shambles,' he told Judge T.S. Ellis III, in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia on March 7. 'The last two years have been the most difficult years for my family. Humiliated and would be a gross understatement.' He laid it on thicker to the next sentencing judge, Amy Berman Jackson, in Washington D.C. on March 13: 'I will be 70 years old in a few weeks. My wife is 66. She needs me. I need her. Please let me and my wife be together.' Self-pitying certainly, but hardly wrong. Sitting in a wheelchair and contemplating the real prospect of dying behind bars, Manafort was diminished in every way, the extravagantly-tailored and immaculately connected powerbroker who could ask for millions for his counsel now wearing prison green as he asked not for money but compassion. Typically though, the whole story was not on display; in recent years, Manafort had betrayed his wife with a mistress 30 years his junior who he put up in a New York apartment and handed an unlimited credit card. That infidelity was only another staging post on the long and spectacular fall from grace for the 69-year-old former Trump campaign manager, the son of a small-town mayor who went on to work for four U.S. presidents and made his fortune as the Washington mouthpiece for some of the world's most notorious dictators. Today Manafort has few defenders in the nation's capital, after being convicted of tax fraud and money laundering by special counsel Robert Mueller - who first secured a guilty verdict from a jury then a plea deal on the eve of a second trial. Even Manafort's former boss, President Trump, claimed he never would have hired the former lobbyist if he had known about the allegations. 'Paul Manafort came into the campaign very late and was with us for a short period of time (he represented Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole & many others over the years), but we should have been told that Comey and the boys were doing a number on him, and he wouldn't have been hired!' wrote Trump in a Twitter post in June 2018. The president had faced Manafort co-operating with Robert Mueller 'fully and truthfully.' But even that was beyond the ability of Manafort, who Mueller's prosecutors charge lied to them after his agreement to cooperate. The power brokers: Paul Manafort, his future business partners Roger Stone and Lee Atwater, were photographed as young Republican operatives. Stone, a Trump confidante and notorious political dirty trickster is now fighting off the Mueller probe himself; Atwater died in 1991, a former RNC chairman with a reputation for dirty campaigns. All three cashed in on their political work by lobbying those they got elected Manafort, the grandson of an Italian immigrant, was raised in a staunch Republican home in New Britain, Connecticut. When he was 16, his father Paul John Manafort Sr. was elected mayor of New Britain and served for three terms. In 1981, Manafort Sr. was indicted – but later acquitted – on perjury charges in a sweeping city corruption and bribery scandal that also ensnared the police and fire chiefs. After Catholic parochial schools and graduating from Georgetown University Law School, Manafort went on to work as an advisor for Republican Presidents Gerald Ford. It is unclear why he was not drafted for Vietnam. He went on to serve as an advisor to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole's presidential campaign. But he worked out how to turn political advising into a gusher of cash: by lobbying the very politicians they had helped elect. He co-founded a prominent lobbying firm with ex-Nixon aide Roger Stone, and Lee Atwater, another notorious figure, which shopped their access to top Republicans to U.S. businesses, state and city governments, and anyone who would pay. The lobbying would be punctuated by periods of working for campaigns - guaranteeing the access on which they depended if their candidates won (which by and large they did). That came to embrace the wider world too; the Manafort lobbying roster included brutal regimes willing to pay high fees for his services – including Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos and Zaire military leader Mobutu Sese Seko. Betrayed: Kathleen Manafort stood by her husband despite his family finding proof of his mistress on Instagram; she attended every minute of his trial and was there when he said he was flipping Manafort went on to found his own political consulting firm in 2005, bringing on his former intern Rick Gates as his trusted deputy. He also continued to take on controversial clients. In 2010, Manafort helped elect Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, head of Ukraine's Putin-allied Party of Regions. The victory paid off – between 2010 and 2014, federal investigators said Manafort's firm earned 'a cash spigot': $60 million in fees from the Party of Regions' political patrons. According to prosecutors, Manafort stashed the funds away in a series of offshore bank accounts and shell companies, and failed to disclose the income in his tax returns. In total, they claim he dodged taxes on $15 million. But after Yanukovych was voted out of power by Ukraine's parliament in 2014, Manafort's fortunes suddenly changed. He stopped getting payments from Yanukovych's wealthy oligarch supporters, and started to have trouble paying his bills. This is when prosecutors claim Manafort started applying for loans using phony financial information. In total, they said he scammed banks out of $20 million. Manafort's then-alleged crimes were uncovered during the course of a special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller, who has been investigating potential Russian interference in the 2016 election and collusion with the Trump campaign. Even before the charges were filed against him, Manafort's personal life had been unravelling, according to years of hacked text messages between his daughters Andrea, 32, and Jessica, 36, that were posted online. According to the messages, Manafort's family had caught him having an affair with a woman who was around the same age as his daughters, renting a pricey house for her in the Hamptons and paying her credit card bill. They discovered the affair after seeing the woman's posts boasting about her expensive travel and dinners on Instagram. Manafort, who was undergoing an emotional breakdown according to the messages, committed himself to a psychiatric clinic in Arizona in 2015. Texts: Manafort's daughters Jessica (left, with now ex-husband Jeff Yohai, who flipped) and Andrea (right with husband Christopher Shand) exchanged text messages which were hacked revealing his affairs and calling him a psychopath. Jessica has changed her name to Bond, her mother's maiden name Fruits of lobbying: This is the condo overlooking the Potomac where the FBI raided Manafort on orders from Mueller. He bought it for $2.75 million, part of a property empire worth conservatively $15 million After he was released in 2016 - claiming he had 'new insight' into himself - he linked up with the Trump campaign and became the candidate's campaign manager during the crucial months surrounding the Republican National Convention. His daughter Andrea took a different view of that. She wrote in a leaked text to a friend, who was not named in the leak: 'Trump probably has more morals than my dad. Which is really just saying something about my dad. My dad is a psycho!!! At least trump let his wives leave him. Plus, Trump has been a good father.' And she also texted: 'Trump waited a little too long in my opinion, but I can attest to the fact that he has now hired one of the world's greatest manipulators. I hope my dad pulls it off. Then I can sell my memoir with all his dirty secrets for a pretty penny.' But getting in tow with Trump in June 2016, his neighbor in Trump Tower, was to prove catastrophic. Trump in fact fired him in August 2017 when questions about Manafort's dealings with Russians in Ukraine started to surface. Manafort returned to his shadowy lobbying life, but then he was caught up in the Mueller probe. In July 2017 his home in Alexandria was raided before dawn; in October he and his loyal deputy Gates were indicted, with charges of tax fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, failing to register as foreign agents and conspiracy against the United States. Manafort's legal strategy was to split the cases in two, meaning two separate trials - one for the monetary charges, the second conspiracy and failing to register as a foreign agent. But before they began, Gates took a plea bargain, turning on his boss, agreeing to cooperate fully and truthfully with Mueller. From there Manafort's path was consistently downhill. In Washington D.C. Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, proved tough; she had him locked up before trial when Mueller accused him of witness tampering. Turned: Rick Gates That meant he attended his first trial, in Virginia, from jail, walking in every day with federal marshals and walking out in handcuffs. In Virginia, Ronald Reagan-appointee T.S. Ellis III presided over the first trial in August 2018. Manafort and his supporters might have been cheered by his apparent toughness on the Mueller prosecutors, including berating them in front of the jury, and repeated demands for them to hurry up. But when the jury returned its guilty verdicts on eight of the 18 counts, other legal observers said Ellis was making sure the case could not be appealed. Ellis declared a mistrial on the remaining 10 counts, which meant that Mueller could keep them in reserve for a second trial. And if there were any lingering thoughts that the judge had sympathy for the felon, Ellis told Manafort that he would be wearing prison, not regular, clothing for subsequent hearings. The next month his second trial was due to begin but Manafort then decided, finally, to seek a deal with Mueller, and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering. He also admitted to most of the 10 charges which the jury could not reach a verdict on the previous month, and - crucially - agreed to cooperate fully and truthfully with Mueller. But he could not even manage that; by November, Mueller filed a court document accusing him of lying in breach of the plea deal. The next month they revealed Manafort's attorney had briefed the White House on his dealings with Mueller. Then in January came a moment which showed Manafort still had the power to shock: Mueller revealed in a court filing that he had passed Trump campaign polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, his one-time aide who has been named as a suspected Russian intelligence asset. In a February hearing Mueller's prosecutors went further, suggesting Manafort might have lied about passing on the polling data to boost his chances of a presidential pardon. Judge Berman Jackson ruled he had lied and set his sentencing for March; his sentencing in Virginia will come after that. If he were to get a pardon, the peril is hardly over; New York state's attorney general is investigating his tax fraud to see if he could be prosecuted for evading state taxes. Presidential pardons do not apply in state courts. Left in tatters is a reputation, a fortune, and a family. His elder daughter, Jessica Manafort filed to change her name to Jessica Bond in August 2018, after his conviction, telling the Los Angeles Times: 'I am a passionate liberal and a registered Democrat and this has been difficult for me.' Despite the clearly unhappy family, Manafort's wife Kathleen stood by him in the face of his infidelity. She loyally attended each day of his tax fraud trial, always sitting in the row directly behind his defense table. Tarnished legacy: Paul Manafort Sr. was three-term mayor of New Britain, CT Since June 2018, Manafort has been incarcerated in a county jail in Alexandria. Largely held in solitary confinement for his own safety, his health has clearly suffered. He attended some hearings in a wheelchair and his legal team disclosed he had been diagnosed with gout. Perhaps more stinging to his vanity, in a mug shot, the fashion-conscious Manafort sported a jailhouse jumpsuit and shadowy stubble. His brown hair, which he previously dyed, is now tinged with grey. The former lobbyist, who once spent $18,000 on a python skin jacket, has also been forced to attend his trial without socks – because he reportedly balked at the white ones he is required to wear as an inmate. He has depression and anxiety and his lawyers complained he had little contact with his family. In letters submitted ahead of his sentence family members pleaded for leniency. But there were no letters from the rich, powerful Republicans who Manafort had counted as his friends. Manafort's conviction even impacted the legacy of his father, the popular three-term mayor in New Britain, Connecticut, from 1965 to 1971. In August 2018 the city changed a street named after the former mayor from 'Paul Manafort Drive' to 'Paul Manafort Sr. Drive.' Advertisement



