Third Trump Campaign Adviser Close to Plea Deal with Mueller

Rick Gates, Manafort Putin and Trump

With so much media focused on the entirely preventable tragedy in Florida, it is easy to lose focus on the ongoing Russiagate investigation which, if successful, might purge the nation from the deadly cancer of the Trump/Pence regime.  As CNN is reporting, Trump campaign adviser Robert Gates appears close to striking a guilty plea deal with special investigator Robert Mueller.   Gates will be the third Trump campaign adviser to plead guilty in exchange for spilling his guts against other targets of the investigation, including Der Trumpenführer himself.   Here are article excerpts:

Former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates is finalizing a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller's office, indicating he's poised to cooperate in the investigation, according to sources familiar with the case.

Gates has already spoken to Mueller's team about his case and has been in plea negotiations for about a month. He's had what criminal lawyers call a "Queen for a Day" interview, in which a defendant answers any questions from the prosecutors' team, including about his own case and other potential criminal activity he witnessed.

Gates' cooperation could be another building block for Mueller in a possible case against President Donald Trump or key members of his team. Gates would become the third known cooperator in Mueller's sprawling probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. It would also increase the pressure to cooperate on Gates' co-defendant Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, who has pleaded not guilty to Mueller's indictment and is preparing for a trial on alleged financial crimes unrelated to the campaign.

It's still unclear what Gates, who outlasted Manafort in the campaign and later worked on the Trump inaugural efforts, could share that would be of value to the Russian collusion investigators, outside the Manafort case. The value of what a defendant says factors into the plea negotiation as both sides finalize the deal.

Gates' plea deal could be announced in the next few days, given that he's asked a judge for an extension until Wednesday to discuss his in-flux legal representation.

At the same time, investigators with the special counsel's office are preparing to file new charges against him, according to people familiar with the probe. The additional charges are tax-related, these people say, which could increase the fines and prison time Gates faces in court. More charges are also being prepared against Manafort   . . . .
 The three trial lawyers who took on Gates' case shortly after his indictment asked to part ways with their client on February 1. The legal team drama culminated in two long sealed hearings in front of the judge last week and on Wednesday. The two-and-a-half hours spent on that topic suggest the lawyers' situation with Gates is more complicated than a typical attorney changeover. Manafort and Gates were at the helm of the campaign during the critical summer 2016 period when senior campaign officials, including Manafort, met a group of Russians at Trump Tower who had promised damaging information on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. They were also in charge during the Republican National Convention when a handful of Trump campaign associates met with the Russian ambassador, and when Trump campaign officials intervened to change language on the platform about the Ukraine crisis.

Rick Gates Lawyers Withdraw from Russiagate Case - Is A Guilty Plea Coming?

Wednesday we learned that Donald Trump and White House Communications Director Hope Hicks discussed hiding emails between Donald Trump, Jr. and Russian operatives from investigators.  The discussion caused one of Trump, Sr.'s attorneys to resign seemingly out of fears of being caught up in obstruction of justice.  Yesterday we learned that three of the attorneys for Robert Gates - one of two individuals indicted to date in the Mueller investigation - resigned, fueling speculation that Gates is seeking a possible guilty plea deal  and cooperation with Mueller efforts to put Trump and his co-conspirators in a bull's eye.   Making the whole situation more bizarre is the fact that the resigning counsel put their reasons for withdrawal in a filing that they asked the court to seal and bar from public view.  In practice, attorneys usually resign for one of three reasons: (i) their client isn't paying their bills, or (ii) the client is refusing to take their advice and recommendations, or (iii) their client is asking them to commit a fraud on the court.  Politico looks at this surprising development. (I suspect Messrs Trump and Manafort will not find this comforting).  Here are story highlights:

Three attorneys representing Rick Gates told a federal court Thursday they are immediately withdrawing as counsel for the former Donald Trump campaign aide, who is fighting special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of him on money laundering and other charges.

Lawyers Shanlon Wu, Walter Mack and Annemarie McAvoy said in a two-page motion that they would explain the reasons for their abrupt move in documents filed under seal with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

“The document speaks for itself,” McAvoy told POLITICO, declining further comment.
Gates and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort both pleaded not guilty to Mueller’s charges filed in October, the first to be publicly announced in relation to the investigation into whether the Republican presidential campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.

While Gates’ shift in legal strategy was a surprise, speculation had been mounting that the longtime GOP operative might be seeking to cooperate with the Mueller investigation. CNN reported last month that Gates had added Washington defense attorney Tom Green to his team, noting he’d been spotted at Mueller’s downtown office twice.  Green has not filed a formal appearance in the court case . . . .

Gates had also retained former assistant U.S. attorney Michael Dry as his attorney, but that relationship was severed before Mueller filed his October indictment.

“The number of lawyers he’s cycled through in such a short period of time is highly unusual,” said one Washington-based defense attorney familiar with the Russia probe.

A criminal trial won’t start until September at the earliest, according to the federal judge overseeing the case, who last month rejected a request from Mueller’s team to begin the trial in May. Gates has also been working to get permanent release from house arrest by securing a $5 million bail package.

He [Gates] was reprimanded in December by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson for appearing in a brief, videotaped address trying to raise money for his own legal defense fund, a move that she said raised questions about his following a gag order issued for all parties and lawyers involved in the high-profile case.

Let's hope Gates strikes a plea deal and spills his guts. :)

Trump Should Be Very Afraid of Mueller: Ask John Gotti or Sammy “The Bull”

While Congressional Republicans and the foul occupant of the White House are striving to focus attention on the U.S. Senate's passage of a horrific tax bill - if the nation is lucky, the House and Senate will prove unable to come to an agreement that merges the two versions of a massive give away to the obscenely wealthy and large corporations - the real news from yesterday is that Michael Flynn has struck a plea deal with Robert Mueller and is now set to spill his guts about Trump campaign collusion with Russia and/or obstruction of justice flowing from the oval office.  Besides setting the stage for serious legal exposure to Der Trumpenführer, the first inklings have appeared that Mike Pence may well also find himself in legal jeopardy.  A piece in the Washington Post notes in part as follows:

After six months of work, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has indicted two advisers to President Trump and accepted guilty pleas from two others in exchange for their cooperation with his probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election — a sign of mounting legal peril for the White House.

With the guilty plea Friday by former national security adviser Michael Flynn — one of Trump’s closest and most valued aides — the investigation has swept up an array of figures with intimate knowledge of the campaign, the transition and the White House.

It appears to have swiftly expanded beyond Russia’s interference in the campaign to encompass a range of activities, including contacts with Russian officials during the transition and alleged money laundering that took place long before Trump ran for office.
And Flynn’s agreement to fully cooperate with investigators suggests that Mueller is not done yet.

Both Flynn and George Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Trump’s campaign, acknowledged lying to the FBI about their contacts with the Russians. Now, both are cooperating with Mueller, according to prosecutors, potentially providing evidence against other Trump aides.

On Friday, the news about Flynn’s deal broke after the regular senior staff meeting at the White House, startling top officials and leaving many feeling helpless.  “We don’t know really what is going on,” said one adviser who speaks to Trump often and requested anonymity to describe private conversations. “Who’s it going to implicate? What are they going to say?”

Flynn’s cooperation poses particular risks for the White House. . . . . If anyone on the campaign coordinated with the Russians in their efforts to interfere with the election, Flynn would probably have been aware.

Aside from the legal implications, Flynn’s account could ratchet up the political pressure on the White House, which will now face more questions about why incoming Vice President Pence, chief of staff Reince Priebus and then-spokesman Sean Spicer insisted that Flynn did not discuss sanctions with Kislyak when other senior officials knew otherwise.

Not surprisingly, Der Trumpenführer is tweeting that Flynn did not implicate anyone in the White House.  Like everything coming from Trump's lips or fingers, the claim is not true.  It seems that Jared Kushner in particular should be very nervous about his own false statements.  As for Mueller's strategy of only hitting Flynn with one of the many charges that he could have faced, a piece in Vanity Fair lays out why Trump should be very, very afraid of what Mueller hopes to accomplish.  Here are highlights:

For months, Mueller has been working his way up the Trump food chain, beginning with a guilty plea by campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, and, more recently, a 12-count indictment against former campaign manager Paul Manafort. (Manafort has pleaded not guilty.) On Friday, after meetings to discuss a deal, the president’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, walked into a federal courtroom in Washington, D.C., and pleaded guilty in an arrangement that reportedly includes his testimony against more campaign officials, possibly including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and the president himself.

It is, one person close the administration recently observed, a “classic Gambino-style roll-up.” To understand how Mueller might now proceed, to get a sense of the compromises he’d be willing to make to bag the larger prosecutorial targets in his sights, it’s eye-opening to go back to the deal he [Mueller] cut with Sammy the Bull.

When Gravano sent word from his cell in 10 South that he wanted to meet with the F.B.I., and that, more pointedly, he wanted to speak to them alone, the overwhelming suspicion was that it was more bull from the Bull. Robert Mueller didn’t believe it.

It is not difficult to imagine the tortured debate within Mueller’s mind as he weighed the decision. He could allow Sammy, a man who had admittedly killed 19 men, to play for Uncle Sam’s team. Or he could go into the Gotti trial knowing that Teflon Don—the swaggering crime boss who had walked away from three prior trials—could once again get away with murder.

All that is known with certainty is that Mueller agreed to the deal that would make Gravano the government’s star witness, the lynchpin of the federal case. In return, a murderer with 19 notches on his gun would wind up spending not much more time in jail than a deadbeat dad.

And all at once John Gotti was on his feet, and he let out a piercing wail as he recognized the act of betrayal that was unfolding just outside his cell door. The plaintive scream, Mouw would say, seemed to echo throughout the entire prison, bouncing off the walls and filling every bit of space. It was a sustained and powerful noise. And he imagined he could still hear the Don’s lamentations as he hustled Gravano into the back of the Chevrolet parked on the street 10 floors below.  It was a nice bit of theatre, but in the end, when the curtain fell, Gotti was—at last!—found guilty.

And Robert Mueller, who would go on to head the F.B.I., had discovered the logic that is the unwritten precept in any treatise on the art of the deal: winning is better than losing. It is ample justification for most any compromise.

Now, as special counsel, he is once again making deals.  He is still determined to get his man at all costs. First he flipped Papadopoulos. And then his office met with Robert Kelner, Michael Flynn’s lawyer. Many accusations were swirling around Flynn, including, not least, his alleged role in a complicated plot to kidnap Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen in return for a $15 million payday (a charge his lawyer has adamantly denied on his client’s behalf). But on Friday the deal was cut: Flynn was charged with one felony count of making a false statement to the F.B.I. regarding his potentially incriminating conversations with the Russian ambassador.

In return for getting off with what amounts to little more than a slap on his bony wrist—the maximum sentence the former general now faces is five years—Flynn will soon have to keep his side of the bargain. Can there be any doubt that the general who had chanted “Lock her up!” at the Republican National Convention has, like Gravano, agreed “to change sides?” Or is there any doubt that Mueller has brought Flynn into his fold because he has his eye fixed, once again, on bigger prey?

It is not difficult to imagine the wail of indignation, a keening and self-righteous outburst [from Trump] that would rival John Gotti’s at his moment of betrayed shock, that might rise out of the Oval Office when Flynn’s testimony finds its target.

Let's hope that Flynn's decision to be "flipped" will be viewed by history as the beginning of the end of the Trump/Pence regime. 

UPDATED:  A fun piece at Mother Jones looks at why Mike Pence likewise needs to be very afraid of where things may be headed.  Here's a small taste:

Mueller’s statement puts Pence on the hot seat. Was he really unaware of what “senior members” of the transition team were told about Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak? After all, at that time, Pence was the head of the transition team. A spokeswoman for Pence did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The bottom line is that Pence, as vice-president elect, made remarks that concealed a questionable Flynn interaction with Russia that was actually approved by the transition team that Pence himself was in charge of. The question now is: Was Pence a witting participant in this plot? And if not, who are the senior Trump aides named in the Mueller document who allowed this cover-up to occur?