Rick Gates, Trump Campaign Aide, Pleads Guilty in Mueller Inquiry and Will Cooperate<br />The plea deal could be a significant development in the investigation — a sign<br />that Mr. Gates plans to offer incriminating information against his longtime associate and the former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, or other members of the Trump campaign in exchange for a lighter punishment.<br />[Read our 2017 profile of Rick Gates »]<br />If Mr. Manafort continues to fight the charges in a trial, testimony from Mr. Gates could give Mr. Mueller’s team a first-person account of the criminal conduct<br />that is claimed in the indictments — a potential blow to Mr. Manafort’s defense strategy.<br />He also admitted that he lied to investigators earlier this month — after he was under indictment and was negotiating with the prosecutors — about the details of a 2013 meeting in Washington<br />that Mr. Manafort had with a member of Congress and a lobbyist, during which there was a discussion about Ukraine, where Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates worked as political consultants.<br />Mr. Gates falsely told investigators that Mr. Manafort had told him<br />that the subject of Ukraine had not come up at the meeting, even though Mr. Gates had helped draft a report to Ukraine’s leadership after the meeting about what had transpired, according to the court papers.<br />Neither indictment indicated that either Mr. Gates or Mr. Manafort had information about the central question of the investigation<br />— whether Mr. Trump or his aides coordinated with the Russian government’s efforts to disrupt the 2016 election.<br />On Feb. 1, according to the records, Mr. Gates misled investigators about a conversation he had with Mr.<br />Manafort in March 2013, after Mr. Manafort had met with a congressman discuss the situation in Ukraine.
