WASHINGTON _ Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates deserves leniency for his "extraordinary assistance" with offshoots of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, the government told a judge just days before his sentencing.
Prosecutors also said in a court filing Tuesday that they don't oppose Gates' request for probation.
Gates was a critical witness in Mueller's investigation of Russian election interference. He was the star prosecution witness in the trial of his former boss Paul Manafort, who was convicted of bank and tax fraud, and he testified against Trump ally Roger Stone and former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig. Gates met with investigators more than 50 times, the filing said.
Gates was Manafort's right-hand man in his political consulting firm and worked with him for a decade before joining him on President Donald Trump's campaign. Manafort is serving a 7 {-year prison sentence for financial fraud.
Indicted in 2017 with Manafort, who was Trump's 2016 campaign chairman, Gates later pleaded guilty to conspiring with Manafort to hide their work as unregistered foreign agents and to conceal his former boss' offshore bank accounts.
Gates' lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson for a probationary sentencing in a late Monday court filing that said he accepted responsibility "in every way possible."
