"I believe that the president's opinion of cooperators is just as pertinent as anyone else's opinion about cooperators," Nkrumah told reporters after the trial.
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Where cooperators and historical documentary proof fails, the gap sometimes can be filled with proactively obtained evidence through such means as surveillance, covert recorded conversations with cooperators or wiretaps.
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If other potential cooperators believed they could drastically reduce their sentence by cooperating selectively, then the cooperation process would be undermined because prosecutors could not obtain information that cooperators wished to withhold.
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Cooperators cannot pick and choose and cannot provide information selectively.
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There would be no justice if it wasn't for cooperators.
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Many of the cooperators in the Galleon case have struggled.
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But investigators have a strong foothold with their multiple cooperators.
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But if that's the reason, you can't leave out the cooperators.
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Cooperators cannot pick and choose what they reveal -- it's all or nothing.
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It's not unusual for prosecutors to catch cooperators in lies or recidivism.
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Thirteen other cooperators took the stand, including Zambada's uncle Jesus "El Rey" Zambada.
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There are other cooperators Cohen is not the only person cooperating with investigators.
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Might it involve information provided by his cooperators, Michael Flynn and Rick Gates?
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One of special counsel Robert Mueller's top cooperators isn't done cooperating with the government.
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I've dealt with many cooperators in WitSec, and it actually is like the movies.
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Cooperators do not get to choose what information to provide or whom to cooperate against.
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And the detectives work alongside a vicious system on the streets for punishing police cooperators.
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The witness list at trial included 14 government cooperators, mostly former traffickers and cartel associates.
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The voice mail became part of Mueller's investigation into whether Trump had tried to sway cooperators.
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For agents like Lawson, that's always the hard part: getting, and keeping, cooperators in the game.
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Other cooperators include deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates and former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos.
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Prosecutors do not normally seek to sentence cooperators who might need to testify in future trials.
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In extreme cases involving long-term cooperators, I've seen sentencing postponed for more than eight years.
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It could relate to what cooperators like Rick Gates and now Paul Manafort have told investigators.
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Gates pleaded guilty last year in Mueller's investigation and has been one of the government's key cooperators.
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"That's what you're really interested in," Ellis said, citing how prosecutors regularly turn cooperators in drug cases.
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Defense lawyers said they would argue the cooperators have an incentive to lie and cannot be trusted.
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The question with cooperators is not whether they are likable (usually not) or good people (usually not).
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Now that a year has passed, some of those cooperators are already reaping the benefits of their deals.
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Meanwhile, cooperators including Blazer made some 200 hours of recordings of soccer officials in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
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When the interrogations ended and he was placed in a special hut for cooperators, the food kept coming.
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And without potentially extremely harsh sentences, cooperators won't come forward to "sell their wares" in order to gain leniency.
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"Cooperators are critical because you need an insider's view," said Christopher LaVigne, a former federal terrorism prosecutor in Manhattan.
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For prosecutors, an overly harsh sentence would signal to other potential cooperators that agreeing to talk had no upside.
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Among the cooperators were the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration, Homeland Security Investigations and the United States Coast Guard.
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When I was with SDNY, I had cooperators originally charged with drug offenses who ended up providing information about murders.
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It's typical for cooperators in conspiracy investigations to hang in limbo for months or even years before they are sentenced.
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I spent countless hours interviewing (or "proffering," in the lingo) potential cooperators and assessing whether they were being honest and forthcoming.
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While DHS facilitates the cooperators' entries into the U.S., the DOJ takes custody of them once they are in the country.
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Cooperators do this for various reasons: personal or familial relationships, fear of reprisal, or a belief that they will be rewarded.
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"But sometimes problematic cooperators have very valuable insider information," added Honig, who is now a criminal defense lawyer at Lowenstein Sandler.
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I've flipped mobsters who swore a blood oath never to cooperate and who have actually killed cooperators during their Mafia careers.
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As a federal prosecutor, I dealt with dozens of cooperators, including gun and drug traffickers, corrupt public officials, mafia leaders and murderers.
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He said Guzzone's identification as a silent owner is nothing more than a "fantasy" and that prosecutors got bad information from cooperators.
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Based on my own experience as a federal and state prosecutor, cooperators most often get in trouble because they lie by omission.
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THE COOPERATORS Several individuals Mueller has brought charges against have agreed to plead guilty and cooperate, turning Trump associates into potential witnesses.
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But as any experienced legal practitioner knows, the government almost always relies on cooperators to make their case against their criminal cohorts.
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Cohen is quickly emerging as one of the most dangerous cooperators against Trump as federal prosecutors close in on the White House.
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The first two cooperators Mueller flipped — George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn — are not known to have had any involvement in the meeting.
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The magnitude of the information the cooperators have provided is not yet known, and each has gone almost completely silent in recent months.
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Prosecutors have long enlisted cooperators with violent backgrounds to achieve the greater goal of taking down a Mafia leader or some violent gang.
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Mr. Trump may also want to issue a pardon sooner than later to signal to other potential cooperators that he has their backs.
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Mr. Lumsden found "cooperators" — like Ms. Kingdon and her parents — who had suitable properties and were willing to host pairs of breeding swans.
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But most of these cooperators — men like Najibullah Zazi or Bryant Neal Vinas — have been veterans of older terror organizations, like Al Qaeda.
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The investigations have also caused former Trump aides — notably Flynn and Gates — to become cooperators, which has opened up new areas of inquiry.
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Cohen had been one of Mueller's earlier targets in his investigation and he became one of the special counsel's significant cooperators near the end.
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The U.S Attorney's Office in Brooklyn declined to comment when asked about the various deals given to the Chapo cooperators and their current whereabouts.
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And with his team working on information from several cooperators and pursuing many different potential angles, it's been a mystery where they'll go next.
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The former national security adviser subsequently pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI, and became one of Mueller's most high-profile cooperators.
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A cooperator, or even a series of cooperators, is nothing more than a hitless first inning, given that humans are notoriously biased and unreliable.
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The cooperators offered detailed accounts of the Sinaloa Cartel's inner workings and Guzman's purported role as boss, including his penchant for murdering his enemies.
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"Cease the irresponsible anti-Cuban expressions of hate, lies, defamations and instigations to violence against Cuban cooperators," President Miguel Diaz-Canel tweeted on Friday.
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The information that cooperators provide on people and places beyond the F.B.I.'s reach helps the bureau make cases it likely could not otherwise.
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When he pleaded guilty, Flynn became one of the most significant cooperators to speak to the Mueller investigation about the President's potentially obstructive actions.
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"Each of these cooperators were drug dealers, day in and day out, shifting and selling drugs for money," Mr. Prevost said during jury selection.
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Victims of crimes and cooperators who help convict kingpins are also eligible for special visas, but Chapo's family is unlikely to qualify for those.
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Even if the jury didn't believe the cooperators, the government showed several videos, dozens of wiretapped phone calls, and hundreds of intercepted text messages.
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When Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to investigators in December 2017, he became one of the most significant defendants and cooperators in the Mueller investigation.
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Clinton has spoken about bugs being some of the "greatest cooperators" in the world and is a longtime dog lover, having owned two chocolate labradors.
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Gates flips The special counsel's office found other ways to bear down on Manafort: line up cooperators against him and get him sent to jail.
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Flynn has not yet been sentenced for his crime, but got one of the most lenient reviews among all cooperators in the Mueller investigation so far.
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Some cooperators understand that they are best served by telling the truth, for better or worse; others play games with prosecutors and end up getting burned.
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For a year and a half prior to this summer, Flynn, being advised by other lawyers, had been one of Mueller's most helpful and dutiful cooperators.
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This mentality, that cooperators pose a grave threat and should be eliminated, is a fundamental value of the mafia and many other kinds of criminal organizations.
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Flynn became one of the Mueller investigation's earliest and most important cooperators in the obstruction investigation of Trump, after Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
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As the fourth week of El Chapo's trial comes to a close, it's more obvious than ever that the case hinges on testimony by cooperators like Chupeta.
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The list of names shows how extensively and how many times Mueller spoke to his top cooperators and major witnesses, such as Rick Gates and Carter Page.
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Known cooperators include Trump deputy campaign chair and Manafort business partner Rick Gates, who has also pleaded guilty to his own role in the money laundering scheme. 22016.
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Burnstein: I think it shows that cooperators need to be vetted more judiciously and with more discretion if the government expects to rely solely on them for convictions.
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Mueller could bring new cooperators into the fold by unveiling new charges, leaving the duration of an investigation that has stretched on for 85033 months shrouded in mystery.
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Conversely, the defense will argue that it is precisely these arrangements that incentivize immunized witnesses and cooperators like Gates to parrot anything the prosecution wants them to say.
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Will the cooperators end being the only ones to suffer a criminal conviction, and the collateral consequences that can bring, while the firm's leadership might avoid such an outcome?
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They also illustrate the key tools that federal investigators and prosecutors routinely use in the pursuit of justice, including granting witnesses immunity, or securing the testimony of convicted cooperators.
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Over the past several months, Manafort's legal options slimmed as the special counsel notched several wins against him, including sending him to jail, securing several cooperators and gaining convictions.
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In fact, it's possible he was literally wearing a wire; that's something that "proactive cooperators" occasionally do, according to one former prosecutor interviewed by the Toronto Star's Daniel Dale.
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If Mueller discovers criminal false statements to Congress in the course of his investigation, it could help him build toward a larger case — and perhaps solicit some more willing cooperators.
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Cooperators do not get to pick and choose what information they provide to prosecutors, or who they cooperate against -- and when they try to do so, the cooperation blows apart.
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Some of the investigation's prosecutors moved to different jobs outside of Mueller's office and the office moved some of its cooperators like former national security adviser Michael Flynn toward sentencing.
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Still, prosecutors understand that juries may look askance at sweetheart plea deals, especially with those who've been publicly demonized, and that defense lawyers may subject cooperators to bruising cross-examinations.
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Prosecutors don't obtain search warrants for the homes of "flippers" because cooperators are doing everything within their power to help the government, and would consent to a search if asked.
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Multiple cooperators have described pervasive corruption in Mexico, including among top military generals, high-ranking police commanders, federal police officers, the attorney general's office, and nearly every level of law enforcement.
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In this way, local feelings of gratitude inspire altruistic acts to essentially go viral, leading to a wave of cooperators helping third parties, even though those parties may not directly reciprocate.
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It doesn't work magically — plenty of witnesses are still refusing to cooperate, and Congress is going to have to consider flexing its muscles and trying to sanction non-cooperators more severely.
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The threats to the Trump image, and whatever substance lies behind his claim to extraordinary competence and vast wealth, go well beyond the information that may be provided by known cooperators.
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Chupeta has admitted that he was El Chapo's primary cocaine supplier in Colombia, and the case will likely hinge on whether the jury buys testimony from him and the other cooperators.
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However, the legal hot water he faces highlights how Mueller's prosecutors have used laws against lying to federal investigators as a way to gain cooperators and gather information during their probe.
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If left unchecked, it will send a dangerous message to cooperators — give testimony consistent with the government's theory of the case, regardless of veracity, or pay the price with your freedom.
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Martinez Sanchez, 53, was part of a chorus of colorful government cooperators who took the stand during the 2 1/2-month trial that put Guzman away for life last year.
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All of these changes would be made while maintaining the pivotal role of local cooperators, including county commissioners, who have a unique and important role in the land-use planning process.
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In her first interview since the Chapo trial, Andrea Goldbarg, the original prosecutor in the case, told me the investigation, extradition, and conviction would not have been possible without help from cooperators.
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"What helped the case was the efforts of the cooperators – the three individuals who took part in this gang fight but ultimately turned evidence, and ended up testifying for us," Vega says.
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Notably, most of the open investigations involve known cooperators, not to mention likely millions of documents, telephone calls, recordings, emails, communications, and tax returns assembled by the special counsel and other prosecutors.
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Large-scale criminal conspiracy investigations are often built around prosecutors' ability to turn criminals into cooperators, who guide them to other, more significant targets or testify against their former colleagues in court.
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One year under indictment Over the past months, Manafort's legal options slimmed as the special counsel notched several wins against him, including sending him to jail, securing several cooperators and gaining convictions.
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"In my experience, cooperators that are bolstered by other witnesses, tapes or documents are usually believed by juries," said Jeffrey Cramer, a former federal prosecutor and now managing director at Berkeley Research Group.
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One route might be to recap the Mueller probe's greatest hits for the public, by subpoenaing his witnesses and cooperators — people like Manafort and Cohen — for fresh rounds of open testimony before Congress.
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I worked as a prosecutor for 14 years, and I know firsthand that prosecutors are, if anything, obsessed with ensuring that cooperators tell the truth, whether it helps or hurts a potential target.
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The word "firsthand" is important because it means that Flynn was a direct eyewitness to the events he described to Mueller -- whereas less valuable cooperators sometimes offer only secondhand, hearsay or background information.
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Cohen has pleaded guilty in two other ongoing criminal investigations into Trump's business dealings and activities during the campaign and has quickly emerged as one of the most dangerous cooperators against the president.
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Other investigation tactics can include getting standard search warrants, obtaining a court order to view a suspicious party's tax returns, or sending undercover officers or cooperators to gather evidence in the field, Rossi said.
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Pinilla later contacted the ex-governor on Moreno's behalf and asked for 100 million Colombian pesos (about $34,500) in exchange for copies of sworn statements taken from cooperators who testified against him, prosecutors said.
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Prosecutors normally do not sentence cooperators until after all their cooperation has been exhausted, meaning Mr. Mueller most likely does not expect Mr. Papadopoulos to testify against anybody who has not yet been charged.
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Speaking at a local election rally in Istanbul, Erdogan said "some people" had begun provoking Turkey and that they were attempting to make the lira decline against foreign currencies with their cooperators in Turkey.
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All of the cases involving a tipper and tippee brought this year came after prosecutors secured guilty pleas from cooperators, suggesting authorities are using such witnesses to help them overcome the new legal hurdles.
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But the case was truly made on the testimony of the cooperators, 14 people who were once among Chapo's closest associates, who agreed to take the stand in exchange for leniency in their own cases.
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Though many cooperators in the Galleon case, like Anil Kumar, a former McKinsey & Company senior partner, and Rajiv Goel, an Intel Capital executive, avoided prison terms, Judge Rakoff took a hard line with Ms. Khan.
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The FBI lost track of more than 60 foreign cooperators in the U.S. after sponsoring them to aid in investigations, according to a report released Tuesday by the Justice Department's (DOJ) Office of Inspector General.
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Mueller's team will have hundreds, if not thousands, of follow-up questions based on emails, text messages, bank records, and statements from cooperators, much of which is entirely unknown to the President and his lawyers.
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He ultimately discovered that two former S.M.M. members, who years earlier became government cooperators in a separate case, had admitted to fatally shooting a livery cab driver in a case that matched Mr. Diop's murder.
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So, it should come as no surprise that cooperators quickly learn that the only way they get time off their sentence is to please the government, and that usually means helping them convict someone else.
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COOPERATING WITNESSES All of the cases involving a tipper and tippee brought this year came after prosecutors secured guilty pleas from cooperators, suggesting authorities are using such witnesses to help them overcome the new legal hurdles.
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It's also unclear the extent to which Mueller details the information key cooperators, such as Cohen and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, provided to him as he investigated links between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
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But according to Esteban Payán, who is Panthera's Northern South America Jaguar Program Regional Director, the landholders he consults are often open to coexistence with jaguars, and many have become avid cooperators on the corridor project.
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The House Intelligence Committee is seeking testimony and documents from the one-time members of Trump's inner circle who each became key cooperators in the Mueller probe after pleading guilty to charges of lying to investigators.
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The case against El Chapo is expected to hinge on the testimony of cooperators who have cut deals with the government, and El Rey is in a unique position to divulge the Sinaloa cartel's inner workings.
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Flynn, who continues to delay his sentencing after a disastrous court hearing last December and subsequent developments that put the spotlight on the Covington & Burling law firm, was one of the Mueller's investigations earliest and important cooperators.
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"I've dealt with dozens of cooperators in my time as a prosecutor, and the reason they go off the rails, as it appears Manafort has, is they are omitting — they are protecting themselves or others," said Honig.
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"According to the Pulitzer Prize winning biologist E.O. Wilson, ants, termites, bees, and people are among the most successful species on earth because they are the greatest cooperators," said Clinton, 70, according to the Clinton Foundation website.
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The panel has the daunting task of combing through hours of testimony from 56 witnesses -- including 14 government cooperators, mostly former traffickers and cartel associates -- who took the stand in Brooklyn, New York, during the federal trial.
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"When you see cooperators … all moving toward sentencing, that's normally a pretty strong signal that the prosecutors have no real use for them anymore and that they don't anticipate, for example, needing their testimony at trial," Sharman added.
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When it does, it'll boast an impressive list of big-name cooperators who once belonged to the top ranks of the president's inner circle, including ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump's former personal attorney and "fixer" Michael Cohen.
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He thought he was going into witness protection, with a home far away and a new identity, after he helped the American government battle Al Qaeda as one of the most important cooperators in the government's fight against terrorism.
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The office released a report on Wednesday auditing the Justice Department's use of programs that allow law enforcement agencies to sponsor foreign nationals to stay in the United States to serve as witnesses, confidential informants, or other types of cooperators.
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Since his sentencing, Papadopoulos has made frequent television appearances and has been outspoken on Twitter about his views of events during the 2016 campaign — a drastic difference compared to the quiet approach assumed by the other cooperators in Mueller's probe.
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The filing was an astonishing break from the bare-bones updates given by the special counsel's office in other cases where cooperators continue to help Mueller pursue Russian interference in the 2016 US election and alleged coordination with the Trump campaign.
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"What Mueller is doing is issuing indictments that are plain on their face, easily provable, with the intent at turning people, flipping people as cooperators," said Seth Waxman, a former federal prosecutor who's now a partner at Dickinson Wright LLP.
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That's an age-old truism in any criminal investigation, but it's especially notable in a case as pressing and high profile as special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, where deals afforded to cooperators have raised speculation about incriminating information they're providing.
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"Prosecutors are going to be cognizant that there are always going to be credibility issues with cooperators," said former prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg, "but these are very experienced prosecutors and they're making a decision that, on balance, they're getting something in return."
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They cite his attacks on the Justice Department and on the F.B.I., his description of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as "a witch hunt," and his criticism of government efforts to turn witnesses into cooperators.
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But cooperators can also aid the government in other ways: by providing the government new leads, by confirming information the government already has, and by explaining evidence the government has collected but does not quite comprehend due to missing contextual information.
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Mueller continues to grind on in his investigation into whether Trump's campaign colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election, turning the president's associates into cooperators who have provided insight into the campaign and their interactions with the White House.
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If I were the president — having been bombarded with all of these witnesses popping up as Mueller-cooperators and all these potential areas of investigation — I'd be happy, indeed, that Mueller doesn't see me as a target of his investigation.
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David Berger, a partner with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, said Mueller was sending an important message to Cohen and other cooperators by supporting Flynn and coming down hard on Manafort, who could now face the rest of his life in prison.
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The memos document what key cooperators -- like former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen and former White House counsel Don McGahn -- told Mueller's team, according to citations in the Mueller report.
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It is possible that Mueller has brought other cooperators into the fold who are unknown to the public; this could include individuals who have plea agreements that are under seal, who have not yet been charged, or who have voluntarily agreed to cooperate.
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Between the spring of 2012 and the spring of 2015, federal judges reported at least 571 instances of "harms or threats" to government cooperators, according to a new survey commissioned by the Federal Judicial Center, the research and education agency of the federal judicial system.
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The prosecutors claim Guzman "hindered the judicial process twice by engineering and organizing his own escapes from prison, engaging in widespread corruption related to public officials, and hiring hit men to engage in acts of violence against rivals and suspected government cooperators," the motion states.
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"It is very important now to determine if there was a network of cooperators, a network of supporters, accessories or assistants helping him to prepare the attack, execute the attack and also to escape," he said at a news conference on Friday in Karlsruhe, Germany.
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The partially sequestered and anonymous panel has the daunting task of combing through 200 hours of testimony from 56 witnesses -- including 14 government cooperators, mostly former traffickers and cartel associates -- who took the stand in Brooklyn, New York, during the 2½-month federal trial.
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The problem is so pervasive, evidently, that a committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the administrative arm of the federal judiciary, is calling on all federal trial judges to impose new secrecy rules that would uniformly shield information about cooperators from public view.
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Given that flipped criminal cooperators are not enough, a prosecutor in a fraud or corruption case will, at a minimum, want strong and consistent documentary proof of both intent/knowledge and actions taken, and strong proof that the target individual is the one behind those documents.
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The F.B.I. and federal prosecutors have long relied on informants to build cases against mob bosses, crooked Wall Street traders and drug dealers, and current and former law enforcement officials questioned whether potential cooperators would decline to help the government without a guarantee of safety in return.
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He has called people "dogs" and has routinely insulted the intelligence of his enemies, whom he has claimed have a "low IQ." Many experts also look at his intimidation tactics used against government witnesses and his criticism of cooperators as "flippers" as reminiscent of a mafia kingpin.
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"Los Padres National Forest would like to thank all the first responders and cooperators that responded to this incident over the last month and giving up the opportunity to spend the holidays with their families and the sacrifices they made," the Forest Service said in a statement Friday.
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Much will depend on the exceptions allowed under the new policy and whether prosecutors use that mechanism to file reduced charges against such cooperators or whether prosecutors use their continuing discretion in such instances not to file any charges at all against the lowest-level participants in a crime.
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But after all that lying to the authorities, Flynn went on to become one of Mueller's most fully engaged cooperators — sitting for 20133 interviews, and helping to ensure that other witnesses came forward too, according to Mueller, who recommended Flynn serve little to no jail time as a result.
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The special counsel has successfully turned other charged individuals into cooperators, namely former campaign aides Richard Gates and Paul ManafortPaul John ManafortTrial of ex-Obama White House counsel suddenly postponed Top Mueller probe prosecutor to join Georgetown Law as lecturer DOJ releases notes from official Bruce Ohr's Russia probe interviews MORE.
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It's not yet clear what investigations Gates has contributed to, though his knowledge of Manafort's dealings, the Trump campaign, President Donald Trump's inauguration, and of his and Manafort's longtime Russian colleague Konstantin Kilimnik -- who now appears to be at the center of Mueller's inquiry -- may be unparalleled among cooperators from Trump's political universe.
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Washington (CNN)Rick Gates, one of the most significant cooperators of the Mueller investigation, is poised to testify publicly against two of his former associates and potentially speak about the Trump campaign's interest in WikiLeaks and the Russian hack of the Democrats in 2016 before he is sentenced in the coming months.
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Likely more significant, observers say, are the cooperators Mueller has in former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul ManafortPaul John ManafortTrial of ex-Obama White House counsel suddenly postponed Top Mueller probe prosecutor to join Georgetown Law as lecturer DOJ releases notes from official Bruce Ohr's Russia probe interviews MORE.
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"The need for government confidentiality may be at its zenith when a law enforcement agency is undertaking a covert investigation of individuals or organizations, where the lives of the public, cooperators and undercover officers may hang precariously in the balance and the reputation, livelihood or liberty of the subject may be at stake," she wrote.
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You're obviously not going to get the FBI to bug the Oval Office as part of an ongoing corruption probe targeting the president of the United States, and even when you do have cooperators, it's simply extremely rare for the nexus of money and political favors to involve the level of explicitness that current law requires.
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At times, the documents have given much fuller portraits about what the Russia investigations' top cooperators said, including how former deputy director Andrew McCabe saw FBI staff crying in the hallways after Trump fired then-director James Comey, or how the investigators handled their witnesses, like when they gave the former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos a granola bar following his arrest.
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Indeed, even as the President embarked upon a pardon spree early on in his presidency (one that I argued was an undeniable message to would-be cooperators against him in Robert Mueller's sprawling Russia investigation), there were rumblings that state authorities were embarking on their own investigations into potential defendants as a kind of insurance policy against any such pardon.
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The use of cooperators previously was featured in investigations that led to the 23 conviction of Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam and a $1.8 billion settlement and plea deal in 2013 with Steven A. Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors LP. Their uniform use in this year's cases suggests authorities are using such witnesses to help them prove that a quid pro quo took place, according to some defense lawyers.
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Mueller's ability to turn associates of President TrumpDonald John TrumpFacebook releases audit on conservative bias claims Harry Reid: 'Decriminalizing border crossings is not something that should be at the top of the list' Recessions happen when presidents overlook key problems MORE into cooperators has been a key facet of his investigation, lending strength to a probe that has pressed on for nearly a year and a half amid withering public scrutiny.
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The 500 pages could shed new light on what key government cooperators like former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former White House counsel Don McGahn told federal investigators, but represents only a fraction of the underlying interview records that Mueller's office made: there were a total of 800 302 forms created by the special counsel's office, potentially numbering some 44,000 pages, Justice Department attorney Courtney Enlow said at a hearing Tuesday morning.
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A sentence of no jail time here is within the sentencing guidelines range of 0 to 6 months but, notably, Mueller did not seek no jail time for less valuable or more problematic cooperators including George Papadopoulos (for whom Mueller requested up to six months in jail -- and who was sentenced to 14 days of imprisonment) and Paul Manafort (whose cooperation collapsed altogether, which Mueller is due to detail in another filing due on Friday).
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