WASHINGTON (CN) – Embroiled former Trump campaign aide Richard Gates asked for extra time Wednesday to review and potentially object to the unsealing of court transcripts recorded between mid-January and February.
Gates filed the request in the federal court in Washington. The current deadline for the review of the transcripts is Friday.
According to the 3-page motion, Special Counsel Robert Mueller does not oppose the request.
“Undersigned counsel was not counsel of record on Jan. 16, 2018, or Feb. 14, 2018, and does not have and has not reviewed the transcripts the government has moved to unseal. Accordingly, the reason for the requested brief extension is to provide time for defendant to obtain the transcripts from these dates in order to make an informed determination, based on a review of the transcripts, regarding whether to file notice of objections to unsealing,” Gates’ newly appointed attorney Thomas Green wrote in the motion.
U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson Berman appointed Green as Gates’ counsel on Feb. 21, shortly after terminating his former attorneys Shanlon Wu, Walter Mack and Annemarie McAvoy. They asked to be relieved due to “irreconcilable differences.”
Superseding indictments alleging tax and bank fraud were brought against both Gates and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort late last month.
Manafort faces two federal indictments in different venues, the District of Columbia and the Eastern District of Virginia.
Seventeen grand jury charges await Manafort in D.C., while 18 additional counts were filed against him in Virginia.
In Washington, Manafort faces charges of conspiracy, money laundering and failure to report financial accounts, lying and failure to register as a foreign agent for what federal prosecutors say were services he rendered to Ukrainian political parties with pro-Russia leanings.
In Virginia, the former Trump campaign chairman faces bank and tax fraud charges connected to a suspected plot to keep the U.S. government unaware of the millions of dollars of income he generated from Ukrainian lobbyists.
Manafort has pleaded not guilty to all charges. His trial begins in Washington on Sept. 17.
He is scheduled to appear at an arraignment hearing Thursday afternoon in the Eastern District of Virginia at Alexandria.
For his part, Gates pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy against the United States and one count of lying to FBI agents.
He agreed to cooperate with Mueller in exchange for reduced charges.
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