U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort will tentatively face sentencing on March 5, a federal judge ruled Friday, after the U.S. special counsel investigating whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia said Manafort had breached his plea agreement, reports VOA News.
U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team must submit a report to the court Dec. 7 outlining how Manafort had breached his deal with federal prosecutors, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said.
Jackson said she would hold a hearing in January to decide whether Manafort had broken his agreement after prosecutors alleged he had committed new federal crimes by lying to the FBI when he was supposed to be cooperating with the investigation.
A precise date for that hearing has not been set.
Manafort’s lawyers disagree that he breached the deal and have said he was truthful in his interviews with investigators.
Prosecutors on Friday also left open the possibility that new charges could be filed against Manafort for lying.
“That determination has not been made,” prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said.
Manafort, a longtime Washington consultant, joined Trump’s presidential campaign in March 2016 and rose to chairman before resigning five months later. He pleaded guilty in September and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors examining suspected Russian meddling in the U.S. election and possible coordination between Moscow and Trump’s team.
But Mueller told the court on Monday that Manafort had since lied to investigators, nullifying their deal and clearing the way for sentencing. Manafort, in the same filing, disagreed with the special counsel but also asked the court to hand down his sentence.
For months Manafort, 69, had refused to work with Mueller but in September made a deal to plead guilty, cooperate with investigators and forfeit millions of dollars in assets, including an apartment in Trump Tower in Manhattan, a brownstone in Brooklyn and a mansion in the Hamptons. The agreement came shortly before he was to have gone on trial in the District of Columbia on charges including money laundering, failing to register as a lobbyist for the pro-Russia Ukraine government and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
In August, a jury in Virginia convicted Manafort of bank and tax fraud in a separate case. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 8 for that conviction.