Mueller files status report highlighting cooperation by key witness

Former Trump campaign aide Richard Gates is still cooperating with federal prosecutors on “several ongoing investigations,” according to a status report filed by special counsel Robert Mueller and Gates’s defense attorneys on Tuesday.

The parties are asking a federal judge to again delay Gates’s sentencing, nearly a year after he pleaded guilty in connection with Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

{mosads}“To date, the status of this matter has not changed substantially since the November report, as defendant Gates continues to cooperate with respect to several ongoing investigations, and accordingly the parties do not believe it is appropriate to commence the sentencing process at this time,” the status report filed Tuesday reads.

The move signals that prosecutors are continuing to question Gates on various matters and are not ready for him to be sentenced.

Typically, prosecutors and defense attorneys seek to delay a cooperating witness’s sentencing until the cooperation is fully realized, so that the judge can take it into account at sentencing.

Richard Gates was indicted alongside his longtime business partner Paul Manafort on a slew of charges related to their lobbying on behalf of pro-Russia politicians in Ukraine in October 2017.

Last February, Gates pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and making false statements and agreed to cooperate in Mueller’s investigation into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Gates has also been cooperating on other unspecified federal investigations. 

Gates testified against Manafort during the latter’s trial in Alexandria, Va., over the summer. Manafort was convicted on eight counts of bank and tax fraud in August before agreeing to plead guilty himself and cooperate with the investigation. 

Gates, who served as deputy campaign chairman and also worked on the Trump transition team, is one of several Trump associates ensnared in Mueller’s investigation. 

Mueller and Gates’s defense attorneys last filed a status report in November, similarly noting Gates continued to cooperate on several probes and was not ready to be sentenced. 

The parties asked Judge Amy Berman Jackson, the federal judge overseeing Gates’s case in Washington, D.C., permission to file their next status report two months from now, on March 15.