US President Trump’s ex-Campaign Chairman ‘Breached’ Plea Agreement

Washington: Paul Manafort, US President Donald Trumps former campaign chairman, repeatedly lied to federal investigators in breach of a plea agreement he signed two months ago, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office said in a court filing. Prosecutors working for Mueller on Monday said in the filing that Manafort’s “crimes and lies” about “a variety of subject matter” relieve them of all promises they made to him in the plea agreement, reports The New York Times.

Defence lawyers disagreed that Manafort had violated the deal. In the same filing, they said that Manafort “believes he has provided truthful information”. But given the impasse between the two sides, they asked Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia to set a sentencing date for Manafort, who has been in solitary confinement in a detention centre in Alexandria, Virginia.

Faced with a second trial in the District of Columbia on related charges in September, he pleaded guilty to two conspiracy counts and agreed to an open-ended arrangement requiring him to answer “fully, truthfully, completely and forthrightly” questions about “any and all matters” of interest to the government. (IANS)