Rick Gates (pictured) admitted to taking part in a conspiracy to hide tens of millions of dollars he and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort obtained for their lobbying and consulting work related to Ukraine. | Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images New indictments revealed against Manafort after Gates pleads guilty Former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates has agreed to cooperate with investigators in their prosecution of Gates’ longtime mentor Paul Manafort.

Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign aide, pleaded guilty on Friday to felony charges of conspiracy and making false statements as part of a plea bargain hammered out with prosecutors from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office.

Gates admitted to taking part in a conspiracy to hide tens of millions of dollars that he and Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, obtained for their lobbying and consulting work related to Ukraine. Gates also acknowledged that, during a debriefing with the special counsel’s office and the FBI earlier this month, he lied about the pair’s Ukraine-related work.


The plea deal leaves Manafort alone fighting charges in the ongoing Mueller investigation.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson released two new indictments against Manafort, one returned last week and the other returned earlier Friday, removing some foreign-account-reporting charges that prosecutors have effectively transferred to Virginia as part of another indictment, unveiled on Thursday, that is focused on tax and bank fraud.

Gates’ plea agreement requires him to cooperate with Mueller’s various lines of investigation, including his prosecution of Manafort, Gates’ former business partner and mentor, who served as Trump’s campaign chairman in the summer of 2016.

Jackson accepted Gates’ guilty plea Friday afternoon but set no immediate date for sentencing. The plea agreement says that if prosecutors deem Gates to have provided “substantial assistance” to the government, they’ll file a motion that could increase Gates’ chances of getting a more lenient sentence than the roughly four and a half to six years likely to be called for by federal sentencing guidelines.

The rest of the charges Gates faces in Washington and Virginia would be dismissed at or after sentencing if he abides by the deal.

Gates, wearing a dark blue suit and maroon tie and sporting the beard he grew after his indictment in October, seemed calm during the 45-minute hearing on the second floor of the federal courthouse near Capitol Hill.

Flanked by his defense attorney, Thomas Green, Gates stood at a courtroom lectern and spoke in quick bursts as he answered Jackson’s questions about whether he understood the rights he was giving up and the possibility consequences of the plea.

“Did you in fact lie to the special counsel’s office and the FBI on Feb. 1st of this year?” Jackson asked.

“Yes, your honor,” Gates said, offering similar answers as the judge summarized the other charges he was admitting to.

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At the end of the lengthy back and forth, the judge asked Gates, bluntly: “What’s your decision?”

“Guilty, your honor,” Gates replied.

The White House insisted on Friday that the development was of no concern to President Donald Trump.

“This indictment has nothing to do with the White House or the president,” Mercedes Schlapp, a White House adviser, said in a Fox News appearance, apparently referring to Gates’ planned guilty plea. “As you know, we have been cooperative with the special counsel. As we continue to see, there’s no evidence of collusion, no evidence of wrongdoing.”

In interviews as the plea appeared imminent, Gates associates said they were skeptical he had information that would prove that Trump or top White House officials improperly coordinated with Russia. The plea could pressure Manafort to cooperate and disclose anything he may know on that front, but what that may be is a mystery.

“I don’t think Rick has anything that’d incriminate the president or anybody else in the family in the campaign,” said Charlie Black, a longtime Manafort lobbying partner who initially hired Gates. “I just doubt that. … I do know he’s got a young family and all that. I hope he’s thinking about planning out his future in such a way that he doesn’t risk the family suffering here.”

Black said he was hard pressed to see Gates offering Mueller much beyond details on Manafort’s work and personal finances.

“The end of the chain is not Trump,” Black said. “That’s what I don’t figure about this. What they’ve indicted Paul for and Rick, for that matter, are things that have nothing to do with Trump or the campaign. Maybe they’re trying to get Paul to turn on Trump anyhow, but Paul has nothing to turn on.”

Black said the decision to flip and become a witness against Manafort wouldn’t be an easy one for Gates.

“I’m sure he’s got a feeling of loyalty to Paul. I don’t doubt that,” Black said. “But this is real serious business here. I don’t know what either one of them did. I pray they’re innocent. But on the surface it looks like they could be convicted of this stuff, so Rick ought to be careful about choosing his path.”

One former Trump campaign adviser, Barry Bennett, said he wasn’t surprised to hear that Gates was deeply involved in the activities that brought Manafort under scrutiny.

“He moves all of Paul’s money around. He sets up accounts,” Bennett said. “He knew what Paul knew and he probably acted at Paul’s direction, which is pretty valuable to the prosecutor.”

Bennett also said Gates was not well regarded during his stint on the Trump campaign.

“You’d be hard pressed to find many people who felt highly of Rick Gates during the campaign,” Bennett said. “He did all of Paul’s dirty work. He’d been doing it for decades. My guess is all these talks with Director Mueller have to do with dirty deeds done dirt cheap.”

At Friday’s hearing, Mueller prosecutors Greg Andres and Andrew Weissmann outlined the scope of the scheme Gates was admitting to. Andres said Gates, described in court filings as Manafort’s “right-hand man,” was deeply and directly involved in helping Manafort avoid taxes on the tens of millions of dollars he made for his work related to Ukraine.

“Mr. Gates assisted Mr. Manafort in hiding income by denominating overseas payments as loans,” Andres said, adding that Gates had “misled the tax accountants in various ways.”

In detailing the lobbying work that Manafort and Gates orchestrated for Ukraine, Weissmann offered the court some new details, alleging that Manafort was regularly in direct contact with the Ukrainian president at the time, Viktor Yanukovych. The prosecutor also said that in 2012 and 2013, Manafort and Gates “secretly retained” a group of former European officials to cast Ukraine’s government in a favorable light, including by holding a series of meetings with U.S. lawmakers and executive branch officials.

While the ex-officials posed as dispassionate observers, “in fact, they were paid lobbyists for Ukraine,” Weissmann said. He said Manafort and Gates used offshore accounts to direct 2 million euros to pay the former officials, known as the Hapsburg Group.

Since the effort targeted U.S. policymakers, Manafort and Gates should have registered at the time as foreign agents for the work, the prosecutor said. However, their firm didn’t register until last June, after coming under investigation.

In a statement released via his spokesman, Manafort lamented Gates’ decision to plead guilty, but said Mueller’s charges are false.

“Notwithstanding that Rick Gates pled today, I continue to maintain my innocence. I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence,” the statement said. “For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise. This does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges contained in the indictments against me.”

Green, Gates’ lawyer, noted during the hearing Friday that the plea agreement left open the possibility for Gates’ defense to argue that Manafort should bear “disproportionate” responsibility for the illegal conduct because he directed the scheme.

While defendants entering into plea deals are typically required to provide information about everything prosecutors have under investigation, it’s unclear how much insight Gates has into the core issues being investigated by Mueller: how Russia allegedly sought to influence the 2016 presidential election and whether Trump campaign officials or American backers of Trump colluded with such efforts.

As a cooperating witness, Gates can expect to be asked about his time working on the Trump campaign starting in March 2016 and his rise to the job of deputy campaign chairman when Manafort himself took the top slot that May. Gates’ time working for Trump overlapped with the release of hacked Democratic emails that damaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign, as well as the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Donald Trump Jr.; the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; Manafort; and a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Clinton.

While Manafort resigned in mid-August 2016 from his job as campaign chairman amid scrutiny over his lobbying work in Ukraine, Gates hung on and became a middleman to the Republican National Committee.

Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, whom Trump tapped to replace Manafort, looked at Gates with some degree of suspicion because of his ties to the ousted former campaign chairman. But Gates remained close to both Kushner and a Trump confidant, Tom Barrack, a relationship that, combined with his political experience on a campaign filled with inexperienced people, helped to preserve his place on team Trump.

“Rick had value,” one former campaign colleague said. “He knew people. He knew what people were doing. When Steve and Kellyanne ultimately needed somebody to make things happen, Rick was still in a position to do that.”

Gates’ competence helped land him a top job after the election on the Presidential Inauguration Committee, where he served beneath Barrack and CEO Sara Armstrong. Several Republicans said that the move offered Gates a chance to stay in the presidential orbit but that it also kept him at arm’s length.

“Nobody wanted to come to Washington,” Bennett said. “Everyone wanted to stay in New York during the transition. It was banishment to the come to the inaugural committee.”

After the inauguration, Gates resurfaced on one of the main Trump political organizations, America First Policies, that was being set up to boost the White House agenda. But the team — which included former campaign staffers Brad Parscale, Nick Ayres, Marty Obst, David Bossie and Katrina Pierson — was also rife with internal jockeying, and Gates was gone by March.

Gates that month also started working for Barrack, advising the real estate executive and longtime Trump friend on a range of legislative and regulatory reform issues, including taxes, foreign affairs, trade and digital infrastructure. A Daily Beast report from last June said Barrack brought Gates along for visits with the president in the West Wing, though that account was contradicted in October by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“I know that there was some initial contact, after the president was sworn in, with him at meetings here at the White House, but nothing directly with the president,” she told reporters after Gates’ indictment.

Gates appears to set to admit that he lied when he said Paul Manafort (pictured) told him there was no discussion of Ukraine at the meeting. The charge says Manafort never made such a statement and Gates helped prepare a report on Ukraine-related discussions that Manafort indicated took place at the meeting. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Gates’ employment with Barrack ended last October when he was indicted. “In all aspects of what he did for me he was competent, capable and reliable,” Barrack told Bloomberg last fall.

During the hearing on Friday, Jackson set May 14 for a status update on Gates’ role in the case. However, Gates’ sentencing could be put off until after Manafort goes to trial or otherwise resolves the separate charges in Washington and Alexandria, Virginia. The judge and prosecutors agreed that as the case went forward, Gates could remain free on bond, but with restrictions on his travel.

After the session concluded on Friday, Weissmann crossed the courtroom and gave Gates a firm handshake. The men appeared to talk cordially, with Green also chiming in.

Gates did not comment on his plea as he left the courthouse. Green also said he’d have no comment for the time being. “Keeping our powder dry,” the defense attorney said.

In a letter to his family, first reported by ABC News, Gates said that "despite my initial desrie to vigorously defend myself I have had a change of heart" and said the reality of how long the legal process would take and the cost were "too much."

“The consequence is the public humiliation, which at this moment seems like a small price to pay for what our children would have to endure otherwise."

A family friend confirmed the accuracy of the letter.

Jackson has imposed a gag order limiting public statements by the defendants and by the lawyers involved in the D.C. case.

The conspiracy count that Gates admitted to largely tracks with the indictment Mueller’s team filed against him and Manafort last October, but consolidating the charges into one count reduced Gates’ potential prison time. Combined with the false-statement charge, the most Gates could possibly receive is 10 years behind bars, although his sentence is almost certain to be lower.

The false-statement charge that was part of Gates’ plea focuses on his comments to Mueller’s team on Feb. 1 about a March 2013 meeting involving Manafort and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), as well as former Congressman Vin Weber, now a lobbyist at Mercury. That meeting was detailed in the Manafort firm’s filing last year that retroactively disclosed foreign lobbying.

Mercury and another firm, the Podesta Group, were referenced in the original October indictments, though not by name. Neither firm has been charged in the investigation.

Gates admitted on Friday that he lied when he said Manafort told him there was no discussion of Ukraine at the meeting. The charge says that Manafort never made such a statement and that Gates helped prepare a report on Ukraine-related discussions that Manafort indicated took place at the meeting.

In an interview with POLITICO last year, Rohrabacher, who has known Manafort for decades, said the March 2013 meeting consisted of a dinner at the Capitol Hill Club.

“Manafort’s an old friend,” Rohrabacher said. “And after the dinner I think he gave me a very modest campaign contribution.”

The GOP lawmaker said that they discussed Manafort’s work in Ukraine but that it wasn’t the main focus of the dinner.

“In retrospect, I don’t remember him talking about specifically who it was who had given him a contract,” Rohrabacher said. “Frankly, I don’t remember if it was the Russians or the Ukrainians. … He certainly wasn’t trying to twist my arm on any policy issue.”

On the same day that Gates allegedly lied to the FBI, his entire defense team moved to withdraw from the case. After some legal wrangling, Jackson released the three lawyers on Thursday. Her agreement to do so came after after Green formally made his appearance on Thursday afternoon.

The new bank fraud and tax charges issued on Thursday by a grand jury in Alexandria allege that Gates and Manafort filed false tax returns for several years and that Gates was directly involved in providing banks with doctored financial information.

Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.



CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to remove an apparently erroneous court reference to a Feb. 2 filing date.