Manafort, Gates, Papadopoulos Charges
Donald Trump needs some reading comprehension skills. Manafort's and Gate's activity was not years ago before Manafort joined the campaign. See Count 12 -- both allegedly made false statements in letters in November, 2016 and February, 2017.
In September 2016, after numerous recent press reports concerning MANAFORT, the Department of Justice informed MANAFORT, GATES, and DMI that it sought to determine whether they had acted as agents of a foreign principal under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), without registering. In November 2016 and February 2017, MANAFORT, GATES, and DMI caused false and misleading letters to be submitted to the Department of Justice, which mirrored the false cover story set out above.
Papadopoulus was arrested in July, 2017 at Dulles. But he was first interviewed in Chicago, voluntarily with counsel present, in January, 2017, and lied. (This was the day of Trump's dinner with Comey.) The FBI recorded Papadopoulus' interview.
He was interviewed again in February and reiterated his desire to cooperate. Then he destroyed messages to and from some of his Russian contacts by deleting his entire Facebook account and creating a new one without the messages. Now he's cooperating again, and was allowed to plead to a false statement count where his guideline range is 0 to 6 months, meaning he's unlikely to go to prison. (No grand jury, an Information with a waiver of the right to an Indictment. But there were two original charges, false statements and obstruction of justice in the original complaint, so he's getting off easy.) More information, including the Affidavit in Support of the Complaint (rather than just the statement of facts in support of his guilty plea and the actual Complaint which are all on the Special Counsel's webpage) is available on the court's docket in 17-mj-00536. One of the things he lied about was whether he was working for Trump's campaign when he had the contacts. He was, but at first he claimed he wasn't.
Manafort and Gates' cases will be unsealed right after their first court appearance today. The case number is 17-cr-201.
There are three case numbers for Papadopolous: District of Columbia: 17-mj-00536 and 17-cr-182. Eastern District of Virginia: 17-mj-00358.
I think Mueller is just getting warmed up.
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