https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...r-trump-484739
Interesting read.
When Rick Gates struck a plea deal last month with special counsel Robert Mueller, the 45-year-old former Trump campaign official likely avoided decades behind bars and salvaged a chance to watch his children grow up.
The question is what Gates offered Mueller in return. Though it is a virtual given that Gates will sell out his business partner and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, less understood is the direct threat Gates could pose to President Donald Trump.
That’s the conclusion of several lawyers involved in the Russia case and more than 15 current and former Trump aides and associates interviewed by POLITICO to determine how much danger Gates’ guilty plea could pose to the president and his inner circle, and how alarmed they might be by his testimony.
While Gates now wears a GPS monitor around his ankle, in 2016 he wore a Secret Service lapel pin that gave him easy access to Trump on the campaign trail and at Trump Tower.
“He saw everything,” said a Republican consultant who worked with Gates during the campaign. The consultant called Gates one of the “top five” insiders whom Mueller could have tapped as a cooperative government witness. One defense attorney in the case said Gates’ plea has triggered palpable alarm in Trump world.
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Manafort may have struck a larger public profile, but Gates spent more time in Trump’s orbit. Manafort left the Trump campaign under a cloud of scandal in mid-August 2016. Gates, his right-hand man, stayed on through the election before assisting the Trump inauguration and Trump’s early presidency.
Worst of all for the White House, Gates lacks hard-wired loyalty. He is not family, like Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., or his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Nor is he among true Trump believers like Corey Lewandowski and Brad Parscale.
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“Let’s be honest, Don Jr. is not ratting out his dad. Gates is different,” said Paul Rosenzweig, who served as a senior counsel to Whitewater independent counsel Ken Starr.
Gates’ senior campaign role alongside Manafort, who has longtime ties to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, might give the special counsel’s team insight into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin. And his proximity to Trump early last year could make him privy to White House conversations of interest to Mueller, possibly including discussions of Trump’s May 2017 firing of FBI Director James Comey.
John Dowd, the Trump personal attorney who stepped down last week, brushed aside questions about Gates’ plea, which will likely limit his sentence to a maximum of six years. “Draw your own conclusions. I’m not concerned,” he told POLITICO in an interview before his resignation.
A defense attorney working on the Russia case said the reality is different. Trump aides and associates are concerned that Gates’ cooperation will greatly increase Manafort’s legal jeopardy — adding pressure on the 68-year-old Manafort to flip against Trump and other senior campaign aides, such as Kushner. A federal judge recently
said Manafort faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.
Trump aides and associates understand that Mueller is sure to ask Gates not just about Manafort but also about his interactions with Trump, his family members and his 2016 campaign team.
“They’ve been very concerned about it,” said the defense attorney. “It's something they're worried about.”
Mueller obtained indictments against Manafort and Gates last October on 12 counts related to their lobbying work on behalf of a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine and its former leader, Viktor Yanukovych. Both men pleaded not guilty to the charges, which included money laundering, tax evasion and operating as unregistered foreign agents.
Gates abandoned Manafort in late February after a federal grand jury
added more new charges to the case related to bank and tax fraud, with Gates
pleading guilty to two felony charges. The move had devastating implications for Manafort, with whom Gates collaborated to illegally launder large payments for the work in Ukraine, according to Mueller. Legal experts expect Gates will provide Mueller withmoredetails about the payments and how they were concealed, which could add additional years to Manafort’s sentence if he is convicted.
Friends say the decision to turn on a friend and partner of so many years must have been painful, but that Gates likely concluded it was his only chance to have a future outside of prison.
“He still has a life ahead of him if he does it this way,” said Charlie Black, a Republican lobbyist who hired Gates in the mid-2000s.
My Bio Page - Texas - West
How much is Rick Gates telling Mueller about Trump?
