How much is Rick Gates telling Mueller about Trump?
Lawyers and Trump associates describe deep unease in Trump world about what the former deputy to indicted Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort might be telling special counsel Robert Mueller in exchange for leniency.
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN 03/26/2018 05:00 AM EDT
When Rick Gates struck a plea deal last month with special counsel Robert Mueller, the 45-year-old former Trump campaign official likely avoided decades behind bars and salvaged a chance to watch his children grow up.
The question is what Gates offered Mueller in return. Though it is a virtual given that Gates will sell out his business partner and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, less understood is the direct threat Gates could pose to President Donald Trump.
That’s the conclusion of several lawyers involved in the Russia case and more than 15 current and former Trump aides and associates interviewed by POLITICO to determine how much danger Gates’s guilty plea could pose to the president and his inner circle, and how alarmed they might be by his testimony.
While Gates now wears a GPS monitor around his ankle, in 2016 he wore a Secret Service lapel pin that gave him easy access to Trump on the campaign trail and at Trump Tower.
“He saw everything,” said a Republican consultant who worked with Gates during the campaign. The consultant called Gates one of the “top five” insiders whom Mueller could have tapped as a cooperative government witness. One defense attorney in the case said that Gates’s plea has triggered palpable alarm in Trump world.
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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/26/rick-gates-mueller-trump-484739
