Following up on reports Paul Manafort's defense team is discussing the possibility of a plea deal, ABC News says Trump's former campaign chairman is not willing to give up the information Special Counsel Robert Mueller most wants.
Sources tell ABC News that Mueller’s office is seeking cooperation from Manafort for information related to President Donald Trump and the 2016 campaign. Manafort, however, is resisting and his team is pushing prosecutors for a plea agreement that does not include cooperation, at least as related to the president, sources said.
Meanwhile, the special counsel's team is forging ahead as if no deal will emerge.
CNN:
Wednesday morning, prosecutors filed a list of evidence they'd like to present at the trial, such as charts, photographs, memos for his Ukrainian oligarch employers and phone records.
The photos the prosecutors would like to show the jury include evidence of Manafort's lavish purchases, which they say help prove Manafort's money laundering conspiracy charges.
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A hearing where Judge Amy Berman Jackson was to consider this evidence was pushed back from Wednesday to Friday.
One of the memos, prosecutors say, shows how Manafort has been in touch with Ukrainian backer Rinat Akhmetov since 2005 and had given the billionaire advice on US policy regarding Ukraine.
Manafort's team has previously said it would like to cut out hundreds of documents the prosecutors plan to use at trial, for reasons ranging from relevance to hearsay.
In one email that Manafort's team would like to suppress, Manafort wrote to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to say he was "managing" a lobbying program for Yanukovych that Manafort "created and paid for [him]self." Other emails describe Manafort's organization of a group of European officials to lobby on Ukraine in the US, called the Hapsburg group, and a report from law firm Skadden Arps about the trial of Yanukovych's political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko.
Other emails prosecutors would like to use at trial show how "Manafort conspired with, among others, Rick Gates and Konstantin Kilimnik as to various charged crimes, and the government will establish the existence of these conspiracies at trial," Mueller's team wrote.