Paul Manafort's Breach of Cooperation: Lying to Mueller's Prosecutors While Sharing Information with Trump's Legal Team Through a Joint Defense Agreement
Tier 1Resolved2018-09-14 to 2020-12-23
Factual Summary
Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign chairman, entered into a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office on September 14, 2018, as part of a guilty plea to conspiracy charges. Within weeks, Mueller's team determined that Manafort had breached the agreement by lying to federal investigators on multiple subjects. Simultaneously, Manafort's attorneys maintained a joint defense agreement with Trump's personal legal team, sharing information about the Mueller investigation with Trump's lawyers even after Manafort had ostensibly become a cooperating government witness. Trump publicly praised Manafort for not "flipping" and later pardoned him.
Manafort had been convicted by a jury in the Eastern District of Virginia in August 2018 on eight counts of bank fraud, tax fraud, and failure to disclose foreign bank accounts. He faced a second trial in the District of Columbia on additional charges. On September 14, 2018, Manafort pleaded guilty to two counts in the D.C. case and entered a cooperation agreement requiring him to provide truthful testimony and information to the special counsel's office.
On November 26, 2018, Mueller's team filed a court document stating that Manafort had "committed federal crimes by lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Special Counsel's Office on a variety of subject matters, which constitute breaches of the agreement." The filing identified multiple areas in which Manafort had provided false information.
Among the "principal lies," according to court filings, was Manafort's misrepresentation of his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian political consultant whom the FBI assessed to have ties to Russian intelligence. An inadvertent failure to redact portions of a court filing revealed that Manafort was accused of lying about sharing internal Trump campaign polling data with Kilimnik. Manafort also lied about his contacts with Trump administration officials after Trump took office and about other matters under investigation.
Throughout the period of Manafort's ostensible cooperation with Mueller, his attorneys maintained a joint defense agreement with Trump's personal legal team. The New York Times and other outlets reported that Manafort's attorney, Kevin Downing, regularly briefed Trump's lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, on the topics Mueller's team was asking about and the information Manafort was providing. Giuliani confirmed the existence of the joint defense agreement to Politico. Legal ethics experts noted that it was highly unusual for a cooperating witness to maintain a joint defense agreement with a subject of the same investigation, and some characterized the arrangement as potentially obstructive.
Trump publicly signaled support for Manafort throughout the investigation. In August 2018, after Manafort's Virginia conviction, Trump praised him for having "refused to break" in order to get a deal and said he had "such respect for a brave man." Trump contrasted Manafort's conduct with that of Michael Cohen, who had cooperated with prosecutors, describing cooperators as people who "make up stories in order to get a deal."
On December 23, 2020, Trump issued a full pardon to Manafort, along with pardons for other associates convicted or charged in connection with the Mueller investigation.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who presided over the D.C. case, found that the special counsel had established by a preponderance of the evidence that Manafort had intentionally lied on multiple topics while purportedly cooperating. She ruled that Manafort had breached the cooperation agreement and was therefore not entitled to a reduced sentence for cooperation.
Manafort was sentenced to a combined total of approximately 7.5 years in federal prison across both the Virginia and D.C. cases. He was released to home confinement in May 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and was subsequently pardoned.
Primary Sources
1. Plea agreement and cooperation agreement, United States v. Manafort, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, September 14, 2018
2. Mueller team filing declaring breach of cooperation agreement, November 26, 2018
3. Court filings documenting specific lies, including sharing campaign polling data with Kilimnik (partially redacted filing, with key portions inadvertently visible)
4. Judge Amy Berman Jackson's ruling finding Manafort breached the cooperation agreement
5. Presidential pardon of Paul Manafort, December 23, 2020
6. Mueller Report, Vol. I and Vol. II, discussing Manafort's conduct
Corroborating Sources
1. NPR: "Paul Manafort Pleads Guilty, Agrees to Cooperate with Mueller's Russia Probe," September 14, 2018
2. PBS NewsHour: "Manafort's cooperation with Mueller has dissolved. Now what?" November 2018
3. Law and Crime: "Mueller: Here's Proof Manafort Breached Deal," 2019
4. Newsweek: "Paul Manafort Had Contact with Senior Trump Administration Official This Year, Lied to Mueller Team, Filing Alleges," 2018
5. The Hill: "Manafort attorney relayed info about Mueller probe to Trump lawyers: report," November 2018
6. NBC News: "Mueller team says Paul Manafort should not get credit for cooperating," 2019
Counterarguments and Context
Manafort's attorneys argued that his incorrect statements to prosecutors were the product of confusion and memory failures rather than deliberate lies, and that the cooperation agreement had been honored in good faith. Regarding the joint defense agreement, legal experts noted that such agreements are not inherently improper and that defendants in multi-party investigations routinely share information through joint defense arrangements. Trump's legal team argued that the agreement was a standard legal tool and that there was nothing improper about receiving updates from Manafort's counsel. Trump characterized his pardon of Manafort as an act of justice, arguing that Manafort had been treated unfairly by prosecutors who were motivated by a desire to pressure him into providing testimony against the president. However, Judge Jackson's finding that Manafort intentionally lied while cooperating was based on a detailed evidentiary analysis, not a finding of mere confusion. The continuation of the joint defense agreement after Manafort became a cooperating witness meant that Trump's legal team had real-time insight into what Mueller was investigating, effectively undermining the purpose of the cooperation agreement. Trump's public praise for Manafort's refusal to "flip," combined with the subsequent pardon, creates a sequence in which a witness was incentivized to withhold truthful cooperation, was rewarded for doing so, and was ultimately relieved of legal consequences by the person who benefited from his silence.
Author's Note
This entry is classified as Tier 1 because the central facts were adjudicated in federal court. Manafort was convicted by a jury, pleaded guilty to additional charges, and a federal judge found that he breached his cooperation agreement by intentionally lying. The pardon does not alter the adjudicated findings; it eliminated the legal consequences. The combination of the joint defense agreement, Trump's public praise for non-cooperation, and the eventual pardon constitutes one of the most clearly documented examples of how the obstruction pattern operated during the Mueller investigation.