Federal prosecutors and Rick Gates, the President’s former deputy campaign chairman, agree: Gates did the crimes, but he shouldn’t do any time.
Gates asked a judge for probation, not prison time, in a sentencing memorandum filed Monday, more than 21 months after he pleaded guilty to conspiring against the United States and lying to the FBI.
And on Tuesday, Justice Department prosecutors filed their own memorandum commending Gates for his “extraordinary” cooperation with several investigations, and saying they did not oppose his probation request — as long as he kept cooperating.
Gates “worked assiduously” to cooperate with several investigations after pleading guilty, prosecutors said, providing “extraordinary” and “substantial assistance in the investigation and prosecution of others.” He cooperated despite receiving pressure not to, they said, “including assurances of monetary assistance.”
Gates attorney Thomas Green claimed his client spent more than 500 hours with prosecutors in special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, other federal and state law enforcement, and congressional investigators. Prosecutors said Gates met “on more than 50 occasions with numerous prosecutors and investigators from a range of Department of Justice components.”
Information from Gates has been used in more than a dozen search warrants, prosecutors said.
Notably, prosecutors noted in Tuesday’s memo that Gates “has provided truthful and valuable information in a number of different ongoing matters.”
In his memo, Green said he believed the government agreed that Gates “has fulfilled every obligation he agreed to (and then some).”
Gates and his former boss, Paul Manafort, were charged in 2017 with acting as unregistered foreign agents, money laundering, and a series of financial crimes and other offenses. Manafort had brought Gates onto the campaign in March 2016, and Gates continued to serve Trump after the election, as deputy chairman of the President’s inaugural committee.
Ultimately, Gates served as a witness against Manafort, Roger Stone and the former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig, and was cited dozens of times in special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report.
Prosecutors noted that the men Gates testified against “enjoy support from the upper echelons of American politics and society.” His cooperation, they noted, made him the subject of intense media scrutiny “in high profile matters, against powerful individuals, in the midst of a particularly turbulent environment.”
Gates’ sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 17.
This post has been updated.
