Indicted Rick Gates set to cooperate with Special Counsel Mueller


Developments on Day 392 of the Trump Administration:

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Former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates is completing a plea deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office in the Trump-Russia inquiry, according to “sources familiar with the case”.

Gates, the top aide to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, was indicted alongside Manafort in October on finance, tax, and lobbying charges.

He has been in plea negotiations for about a month while speaking to Mueller’s team, including an interview in which he answered questions about his case and other potential criminal activity that he witnessed.

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and former Trump foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos are already cooperating with Mueller’s team after their guilty pleas over lying to the FBI.

A White House official insisted that “there’d be no anxiety here” over any deal: “If Gates cooperates against Manafort that’s nothing to us. They have a hard case to make against Manafort. That’s why Gates might get favorable treatment.”

Mueller’s team questioned former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon for hours over two days earlier this week.

Sources says the encounters were likely to have covered Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, in a failed attempt to halt the Russia inquiry, and the case of Flynn, eventually dismissed over lying to investigators about his December 2016 conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Bannon, who was dismissed from the White House last August, has stonewalled in appearances before the House Intelligence Committee, saying he had been instructed by the White House to invoke executive privilege on behalf of the President.

But sources said he was answered all questions from Mueller’s team.

In interviews published this winter, Bannon has depicted a chaotic Trump campaign and Administration. He described as “treasonous” a June 2016 meeting of Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Manafort with three Kremlin-linked envoys; said Kushner was “naive” in other meetings with Russian officials; and predicted that Russian money laundering might eventually bring down Trump and his inner circle.