(CNN) Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort will be sentenced for the first time on March 13, a federal judge in Washington who approved his guilty plea said Monday.

The court date sets up one of the most anticipated bookends of Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates were the targets of the first criminal indictment to come from Mueller's unit in October 2017. Since then, Manafort has been the only defendant to go to trial -- and was thought to be both a top target of the prosecutors and, later, potentially a star witness in the investigation. His case led prosecutors and the public through months of unexpected developments during the probe, including, ultimately, the accusation that he had lied after agreeing to cooperate

Those lies allegedly involved his attempts to cover up communications with a longtime Russian colleague and with Trump administration officials from 2016 on after Mueller asked about them late last year. Manafort says he did not intentionally lie during the interviews.