Although Special Counsel Robert Mueller referred the Sam Patten Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) investigation to the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO), the picture is becoming clearer as to why Patten was on Mueller’s radar in the first place.

Earlier Friday, Law&Crime noted that Patten, an associate of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates in the lobbying world, had ties to suspected Russian intelligence agent Konstantin Kilimnik. Patten was charged for acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Russia and Ukraine between 2014 and 2017. It happened after Mueller referred the investigation to the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Department of Justice National Security Division.

Kilimnik, you may recall, was slapped with lobbying violations in June, as Mueller brought witness tampering and conspiracy charges against Manafort in a superseding indictment. Kilimnik’s ties to Patten go back two decades.

CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz is now reporting that prosecutors are alleging that Patten sought tickets to Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States “on behalf of a prominent Ukrainian oligarch” and acted as a “straw purchaser” to do so. Prosecutors say Ukrainian money was secretly funneled to the inauguration committee “through a Cypriot bank account.”

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Prosecutors say Samuel Patten sought tickets to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration on behalf of a prominent Ukrainian oligarch. Patten acted as a “straw purchaser,” funneling the Ukrainian’s money secretly to the inauguration committee through a Cypriot bank account. — Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) August 31, 2018

Why does this matter? It had already been reported as far back as April that Mueller was investigating whether “wealthy Russians illegally funneled cash donations directly or indirectly into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and inauguration.”

Sources said at the time claimed that Mueller had a theory that “straw donors” (particularly Americans) acted as “a vessel through which they could pump money into the campaign and inauguration fund.”

D.C. prosecutors are saying that this is exactly what happened in the case of Patten. In fact, they said he admitted it.

The latest news is that Patten has waived a trial by jury. The reason why is that he’s reached a plea agreement to cooperate with both Team Mueller’s investigation and D.C. prosecutors.

W. Samuel Patten has agreed to cooperate with both Robert Mueller’s special counsel office and prosecutors from the DC US Attorney’s Office going forward, according to new court documents available following his guilty plea. — Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) August 31, 2018

A new cooperator for Mueller: As part of Patten’s plea agreement, the DOJ says it will not bring charges against him for causing foreign money to flow to the Presidential Inaugural Committee in 2017. — Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) August 31, 2018

A copy of the cooperation agreement is below.

JUST IN: Sam Patten, subject of today's new charges, has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, including the Special Counsel's Office, as part of his plea agreement. pic.twitter.com/NK4W6l8hoW — Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) August 31, 2018

Patten’s ties to Cambridge Analytica have also been explored.

In April, we scooped that Sam Patten had worked with Cambridge Analytica in 2014 and cofounded a company with a suspected Russian intel operative the next year https://t.co/eH0WOCcZXX Today, he was accused of running an illegal foreign influence campaign https://t.co/4n7p7KQ9Ql — Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) August 31, 2018

Revealing: Sam Patten: “I have no reason to suspect him [Kilimnik] of being a Russian agent." The two worked together for decades including at IRI. What others at IRI said about Kilimnik “It was like ‘Kostya, the guy from the GRU’ — that’s how we talked about him.” — Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) August 31, 2018

[Image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]

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