Prosecutors on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team said Monday that Paul Manafort broke the terms of his plea agreement — putting the terms of the deal, reached in September, in jeopardy and making it more likely that the former chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
In a three-page joint court filing in federal court in Washington, federal prosecutors said Manafort “committed federal crimes by lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Special Counsel’s Office on a variety of subject matters” after agreeing to the plea deal. The alleged have not yet been described in detail.
A jury in Virginia had convicted Manafort, 69, of eight counts of bank and tax fraud in August stemming from his work as a political consultant in Ukraine. That conviction left him facing a maximum of 80 years in prison.
Faced with a second trial in Washington on related charges, a day before jury selection was set to begin, on Sept. 14, Manafort pleaded guilty to two conspiracy counts and agreed to “fully, truthfully, completely and forthrightly” answer questions about “any and all matters” of interest to Mueller.
As part of the plea agreement, there was a 10-year cap on how long Manafort will be sent to prison, and for him to serve time from the Virginia and Washington cases concurrently.
The plea agreement says that if Manafort fails to fulfill “each and every one” of his obligations or “engages in any criminal activity prior to sentencing,” he will be in breach of it.
Lawyers for Manafort denied their client did so in the Monday filing, saying he “has provided information to the government in an effort to live up to his cooperation obligations.”
“He believes he has provided truthful information and does not agree with the government’s characterization or that he has breached the agreement,” the lawyers said.
Both sides told U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Monday that they agreed that sentencing in should be set immediately.
Federal prosecutors said they would soon file a sentencing memo that details “the nature of the defendant’s crimes and lies.”
Deadlocked charges against Manafort from Virginia are also in jeopardy due to Manafort’s alleged breach of the plea deal. The deal wold have dismissed the charges — but only after “successful cooperation” with Mueller’s probe.
In October, the federal judge overseeing the Virginia case scheduled a Feb. 8 sentencing date for Manafort. At the time, Mueller’s attorneys told U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III that they would accept a dismissal of the remaining counts so long as they had the option to re-file the charges in the future.
Manafort has already been in jail for nearly half a year. Manafort was sent to jail on June 15 by Berman Jackson after Mueller’s prosecutors accused him of tampering with potential witnesses.
