Sam Patten, a former associate of Paul Manafort, pleaded guilty in federal court on Friday to illegally acting as a foreign agent and has agreed to cooperate with government prosecutors.
Patten pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a federal law governing foreign lobbying, in federal court in D.C. on Friday.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson accepted his guilty plea.
He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, followed by supervised release for up to three years, and could be fined up to $250,000 for the offense.
As part of his plea agreement, Patten has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Special counsel Robert Mueller referred Patten’s case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C., William Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, confirmed to The Hill.
The cooperation agreement filed Friday states that Patten “shall cooperate fully, truthfully, completely, and forthrightly with this Office, the Special Counsel’s Office, and other law enforcement authorities identified by this Office in any and all matters as to which this Office deems the cooperation relevant.”
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The charges stem from Patten’s work lobbying on behalf of a political party in Ukraine, known as the Opposition Bloc, between 2014 and 2018, according to the criminal information document federal prosecutors filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday.
The government alleges that Patten worked with a Russian national identified as Foreigner A on lobbying and political consulting services and helped the individual and a Ukranian oligarch broker meetings with U.S. officials from the State Department and members of Congress on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
A company that Patten jointly controlled with the Russian, identified as Company A, made more than $1 million for the work.
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Patten, a Washington-based political operative, worked with Manafort on campaigns in Ukraine. Patten also reportedly once worked for Cambridge Analytica, the data firm that came under scrutiny following its work for the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.
Patten also worked with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian who Mueller indicted earlier this year along with Manafort for conspiring to obstruct justice and obstructing justice.
Kilimnik is widely believed to be the Russian national identified as Foreigner A in the criminal information filed on Friday.
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Former Manafort associate pleads guilty in federal court, will cooperate with government https://t.co/Fg7abKnBmo pic.twitter.com/GImVpG0vtS
— The Hill (@thehill) August 31, 2018
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