Rick Gates’ guilty plea to federal conspiracy and false-statements charges turns him from defendant to cooperating witness in the special counsel’s probe of President Donald Trump’s election campaign and Russia’s interference.
The plea by Mr. Gates, a former senior adviser to President Donald Trump’s election campaign, revealed he will help special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in “any and all matters” as prosecutors continue to probe the 2016 campaign, Russian meddling and Mr. Gates’ longtime business associate, one-time campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
With his cooperation, Mr. Gates gives Mr. Mueller a witness willing to provide information on Manafort’s finances and political consulting work in Ukraine and someone who had access at the highest levels of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Mr. Gates (45), of Richmond, Virginia, made the plea at the federal courthouse in Washington. He stood somberly beside his attorney and did not speak during his hearing, except to answer routine questions from the judge about whether he understood the rights he was giving up.
The plea came a day after a federal grand jury in Virginia returned a 32-count indictment against Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort, accusing them of tax evasion and bank fraud. Gates is the fifth defendant to plead guilty in Mueller’s investigation.
The indictment in Virginia was the second round of charges against Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort, who were initially charged last October with unregistered lobbying and conspiring to launder millions of dollars they earned while working on behalf of a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party.
Mr. Manafort continues to maintain his innocence.
“I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise,” Mr. Manafort said on Friday. “This does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled-up charges contained in the indictments against me.”
In court filings over the past few months, Mr. Gates gradually began to show the strain the case was placing on him and his family.
Mr. Gates’ plea comes on the heels of last week’s stunning indictment that laid out a broad operation of election meddling by Russia. It began in 2014, and employed fake social media accounts and on-the-ground politicking to promote Trump’s campaign, disparage Hillary Clinton and sow division and discord widely among the U.S. electorate.
The charges to which Mr. Gates is pleading guilty don’t involve any conduct connected to the Trump campaign. They largely relate to a conspiracy of unregistered lobbying, money laundering and fraud laid out in his indictments.
But his plea does newly reveal that Mr. Gates spoke with the FBI earlier this month and lied during the interview. That same day, his attorneys filed a motion to withdraw from representing him for “irreconcilable difference.”
Mr. Gates served on the Trump campaign at the same time that Mr. Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner met with a team of Russians in Trump Tower in June 2016. He was also involved in the campaign when then-Sen. Jeff Sessions held a pair of undisclosed meetings with Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.
For a few months in 2016, Mr. Gates was indispensable to Mr. Trump, leading the ground effort to help Mr. Trump win the Republican nomination and flying from state to state to secure Republican delegates in a scramble that lasted all the way until the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
But his power and influence waned once Mr. Trump fired Mr. Manafort in August 2016 after The Associated Press disclosed how Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort covertly directed a Washington lobbying campaign on behalf of Ukrainian interests.
Mr. Gates survived his mentor’s ouster, serving as the campaign’s liaison to the Republican National Committee and later working on Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee. Mr. Gates also worked briefly with America First Policies and America First Action, outside political groups supporting Mr. Trump’s agenda, but was pushed out of that job last year.
When he was indicted last October, Mr. Gates was working for Tom Barrack, a close friend of Mr. Trump.
Friday’s court papers accuse Mr. Gates of lying to federal agents about a March 19, 2013, meeting involving Mr. Manafort, a lobbyist and a member of Congress. Mr. Gates said the meeting did not include discussion of Ukraine; prosecutors say it did.
The charges don’t name the lobbyist or the lawmaker, but filings with the Justice Department show Manafort and Vin Weber of Mercury Public Affairs met with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., on that date as part of a lobbying campaign on behalf of Ukrainian interests.
Also on Friday, Mueller’s team unsealed a new indictment solely against Mr. Manafort that included an allegation that he, with Mr. Gates’ assistance, secretly paid former European politicians to lobby on behalf of Ukraine.
The indictment accuses Mr. Manafort of paying the former politicians, informally known as the “Hapsburg group,” to appear to be “independent” analysts when in fact they were paid lobbyists. Some of the covert lobbying took place in the U.S.
The indictment says the group was managed by a former European chancellor. Court papers accuse Mr. Manafort of using offshore accounts to pay the group more than 2 million euros.
