As he awaits the start of a second federal trial in Washington, D.C., a surprising bit of news emerged yesterday from the legal team of Paul Manafort. According to both ABC News and The Washington Post, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman is in talks with Robert Mueller about potentially cutting a deal. Manafort, after all, faces the very real possibility that, at 69, he could spend the rest of his life behind bars. But Trump’s legal team continues to send smoke signals encouraging Manafort to stay strong and hope for a pardon. Further complicating Mueller’s calculus is the possibility that Manafort, as the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, suggested in an interview Wednesday, might be able to have it both ways.

“We can see a reason why he might want to [take a deal]. What’s the need for another trial?” Giuliani told Politico. “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?” When asked whether a plea deal with Mueller would exclude Manafort from consideration for a pardon, Giuliani told Politico, “No, it doesn’t. I can’t speak for his exercising discretion on a pardon. But I don’t see why it would foreclose it, no.”

There are certainly advantages for Trump in a potential Manafort-Mueller bargain. Avoiding the spectacle of another high-profile trial involving his former campaign chairman would spare both the president and his party a round of damaging press ahead of the midterms. And though securing Manafort’s cooperation in the ongoing D.O.J. probe into Russian collusion would be an even greater prize than slapping him with additional charges, there are signs that the disgraced G.O.P. operative is still holding out for aid from the White House. According to ABC News, he has continued to resist cooperating with the special counsel, “at least as related to the president.”

To hear Giuliani tell it, this is exactly the sort of thing that will endear Manafort to 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.” For Manafort, the prospect of a clean slate could be a powerful motivator. “He’s already guaranteed to go to prison for years, he’s got little reasonable chance of winning in D.C., it’s in­cred­ibly expensive, and there’s no benefit to him (in going to trial),” Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor, told the Post. “If it wasn’t for the possibility of a pardon, it would be insane for him not to cut a deal at this point.”

To secure a plea deal, Manafort will likely have to make a series of concessions to Mueller. “I expect they would consider letting him plead guilty to some counts, in exchange for dropping some charges,” former federal prosecutor Randall Eliason told Politico. Whether he’s able to do so while staying in Trump’s good graces remains to be seen. Manafort could potentially play Mueller and the president against each other, parlaying the threat of a pardon into a better deal with the special counsel. It all depends on whether Manafort and Mueller are betting men. If Mueller believes that Manafort would prefer to gamble on a pardon, he may be inclined to sweeten the deal. Manafort, after all, may recognize that the small odds of a get-out-of-jail-free card are still better than potentially dying in prison, even with a reduced sentence. The fact that Manafort has nothing to lose, then, might actually give him more leverage. It all depends on what valuable information Manafort really knows about the president, and whether Trump or Mueller believe he will talk.