Former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates is expected to plead guilty Friday in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe to charges of conspiracy and making false statements.
A superseding criminal complaint charges Gates with conspiracy against the United States and making a false statement to law enforcement.
Gates has a plea hearing set for Friday afternoon.
The apparent decision to enter a guilty plea could indicate Gates, a longtime associate of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is planning to cooperate with the investigation.
It would mark the fifth publicly known guilty plea in the special counsel probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin during the 2016 campaign.
The Gates plea would come a day after a federal grand jury in Virginia returned a 32-count indictment against him and Manafort accusing them of tax evasion and bank fraud. That was the second round of charges against the two men.
The plea also comes quickly on the heels of a stunning indictment last week that laid out a broad operation of election meddling by Russia, which began in 2014, and employed fake social media accounts and on-the-ground politicking to promote the campaign of Donald Trump, disparage Hillary Clinton and sow division and discord widely among the U.S. electorate.
Gates initially pleaded not guilty and has been facing up to 12.5 years in jail -- based on a 12-count indictment handed up in October accusing him and Manafort of acting as unregistered foreign agents and conspiring to launder millions of dollars they earned while working on behalf of a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party.
