It has been rumored for days that Paul Manafort was involved in negotiating some sort of plea deal with the Special Counsel's office. What wasn't known until Friday afternoon was whether this would include a cooperation agreement.
The answer came: Yes, the deal does require Manafort to cooperate and to answer any and all questions about any of his activities, as well as other things he knows, what others did or said, as well as all he knows about the Trump Tower meeting with Russians -- and all his connections with Russian oligarchs and whether there was any conspiracy between Russian and the Trump campaign.
This is huge !!! We'll hear a lot of pundit and expert legal analysis of this. But, assuming from what the early readings of the agreement seem to suggest: Mueller now can get any information that Mueller has. And if he does not fully cooperate, then he doesn't get the reduced sentence that's pending.
A cooperating plea deal also does not allow him to take the 5th amendment. Some have even opined that it also makes a pardon impossible. Perhaps not technically impossible; but it would make Trump liable to charges of attempting to obstruct justice. Besides, we can assume that Manafort has already told Mueller's team a lot of what he knows as part of negotiations about the plea deal.
Ralph
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