The agreement shows just how valuable Manafort could be to the government. Among other matters, Mueller has been eyeing the meeting Waxman referenced, which Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner attended in June 2016 with Russian nationals offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. “This is also incredibly important because if the president were to pardon Manafort under these circumstances, the case against the president for obstruction of justice would be even more compelling,” Waxman said. “In short, this is a huge day for the government.”

Manafort’s tenure on the campaign, spanning from roughly March through August 2016, coincided with some of the most significant Russia-related events of the election. In April, he appeared to offer the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska private briefings about the campaign in exchange for debt relief. In July, a proposed amendment to the GOP’s party platform that advocated sending arms to Ukraine to defend against Russian aggression—a position in line with Republican orthodoxy at the time—was gutted. Later that month, WikiLeaks began dumping emails that Russia had stolen from the Democratic National Committee. Manafort also received emails from the Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who had already learned of Russian dirt on Clinton, offering to set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. By late August, Manafort was forced to formally step down as campaign chairman after reports surfaced that he was allocated millions of dollars in off-the-books payments by a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine.

Speculation abounded this week that Manafort was inching toward a plea agreement, but whether he would agree to cooperate with the government remained in doubt. Once Mueller’s team posted its criminal information against Manafort on Friday, however, it seemed clear that Manafort was flipping: Prosecutors gave him a pretty good deal, dropping five of the seven charges he would have faced in the D.C. trial, including those for money laundering and acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Manafort did not contest those accusations as part of his plea agreement, but he won’t be charged with them. The government also dropped the 10 charges that jurors could not reach a verdict on during his earlier trial in Alexandria, Virginia. As part of his plea deal, however, Manafort will be required to forfeit $46 million in cash and properties to the U.S. government.

Paul Manafort’s pursuit of foreign cash and shady deals laid the groundwork for the corruption of Washington.

Unlike the Virginia trial—a standard white-collar-crime case that centered around how Manafort hid, and later distorted, his cash flow—the D.C. proceedings would have focused on issues related more closely to the Russia inquiry, namely, Manafort’s connections to Russian and pro-Russian entities in Ukraine and his alleged lobbying on their behalf in the United States. Manafort’s plea agreement means that those connections won’t be exposed and dissected in court. And it will save both sides the time and cost of a trial.