ABC News is reporting that Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort has agreed to a plea deal rather than go ahead with a second trial. At this point it’s not clear that this deal includes any form of agreement with federal prosecutors. Manafort’s legal team will appear in court on Friday to enter the plea.
In making this plea, Manafort avoids the expense of a trial that looked to be longer than the first. Coming off eight convictions on fraud and tax evasion in his first trial, and facing hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence submitted by the prosecution for this second trial, Manafort may have decided to simply avoid the stress and expense. In any case, at 69, Manafort may be counting on a deal or a pardon from Trump to avoid spending the remainder of his life in prison.
On Thursday, Rudy Giuliani expressed confidence that Manafort would never flip on Trump. Trump has also praised Manafort for following through on his first trial without making a deal to cooperate with the special counsel. This has led to suggestions that Manafort would make exactly the move that he appears to have made here—plead guilty and hope that Trump provides a pardon. There have also been suggestions that by making such a move now, Manafort could spare Trump the spectacle of a lengthy trial that plowed on into the weeks just before the midterm elections, a move that might make Trump extra grateful.
In pleading guilty Manafort, like Michael Cohen, is making a very public admission that there was criminal activity among the members of Trump’s campaign team. Manafort’s charges include money laundering, acting as an unregistered agent for a foreign government, and tampering with a witness.
As in previous instances, Trump is likely to make loud proclamations that Manafort’s crimes are unconnected to his campaign and don’t show collusion with Russia. However, there is good evidence that both the Cohen plea and the conviction of Manafort in his first trial were damaging to Trump. Those twin expressions of guilt seemed to correspond with the recent drop in Trump’s poll numbers.
Jury selection on Manafort’s second trial in Washington D. C. was slated to begin next week. Accepting a plea deal does not mean that Manafort cannot be pardoned.