longtime federal prosecutor said President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman has likely already delivered the goods to the special counsel before reaching a plea agreement.
Glenn Kirschner, a former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s District of Columbia office, said Paul Manafort would almost certainly be asked to provide “blockbuster information” to Robert Mueller before investigators would accept his guilty plea.
“I’ve been behind those closed doors in well over 100 meetings in secure interview rooms with defendants who are hoping to become cooperators,” Kirschner said. “There are a couple features that I think are universal in those meetings, and I’m quite sure this is how it played out for the Mueller team.”
He said prosecutors would tell Manafort to list every crime he had committed, and then identify every crime committed by others — and he pointed out the former campaign chairman had taken part in the Trump Tower meeting with Russians offering information against Hillary Clinton.
“They would ask about any crime he knows about, whether Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner or others,” Kirschner said. “Then they begin corroborating everything he’s said with external information. It’s only after they’re satisfied of all of that that they can offer him a cooperation agreement.”
