Less than 24 hours after Robert Mueller filed a new 32-count indictment against Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, Gates is expected to plead guilty. Two sources familiar with Gates’s plight told The New York Times that the former Trump campaign aide could enter his plea as soon as Friday afternoon, indicating that he will join Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos in turning state’s evidence in exchange for leniency.

The breaking of Rick Gates represents a dramatic escalation of Mueller’s probe into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. While the White House previously said it was unconcerned by the possibility that Gates would sing, the former campaign official was present at several critical junctures of the Trump-Russia affair. As deputy campaign chairman, Gates was on board during Don Jr.’s Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer, as well as for the campaign surrogates’ meeting with Russian officials during the Republican National Convention, when the decision was made to change the language in the official Republican platform to make it more sympathetic to Russian interests. And he remained on the Trump team throughout the transition period, when Jared Kushner and other campaign officials made contact with Russians, including Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Vnesheconombank Chairman Sergey Gorkov.

While he previously pleaded not guilty, yesterday’s indictment raised the stakes for Gates, who was reportedly struggling to pay his legal bills and concerned about the effect a drawn-out court battle would have on his family. In the new charges, Mueller accused Manafort and Gates of orchestrating a decade-long money-laundering scheme in which they allegedly lied on their income tax returns and committed bank fraud to secure loans. While they did not directly involve the Trump campaign, the fresh charges indicated that Mueller was ratcheting up the pressure on both Manafort and Gates to cooperate with the F.B.I. in the ongoing investigation—an effort that clearly paid off. Both former campaign aides faced de facto life sentences for the charges, according to Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago. “This is pretty raw criminality,” Cotter told The Washington Post. “According to the indictment, these are two fellows on a multi-year tear of lying to every bank they could find about their income. To a federal prosecutor, it’s fairly crude. It’s extensive and bold and greedy with a capital ‘G,’ but it’s not all that sophisticated.”

Manafort and Gates were first indicted last October on 12 counts, including conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, and failure to register as a foreign agent, among other charges. But the new indictment provides greater detail of what prosecutors characterized in the filing as a multi-year plot to live lavish lifestyles in the United States off laundered income from consulting for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. “Manafort and Gates generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a result of their Ukraine work. From approximately 2006 through the present, Manafort and Gates engaged in a scheme to hide income from United States authorities, while enjoying the use of the money,” the indictment reads. According to the 37-page court filing, more than $75 million flowed through the offshore accounts set up by the former Trump campaign members, of which Manafort—with the assistance of Gates—laundered more than $30 million. Gates allegedly obtained $3 million of the sum, which he also concealed from the United States government. (Manafort has pleaded not guilty.)

Perhaps most notable, and unlike Mueller’s previous indictment, the new filing outlined criminal behavior that occurred while Manafort and Gates worked on the Trump campaign. After Manafort joined in March 2016, he and Gates allegedly engaged in fraudulent behavior to secure bank loans. And according to the indictment, Manafort lied on his tax filings about whether he had offshore accounts as recently as October 2016, while Gates lied about his offshore accounts as recently as October 2017. (In a statement on Friday, Manafort dismissed the new charges. “Notwithstanding that Rick Gates pled today, I continue to maintain my innocence,” Manafort said. “I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise. This does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges contained in the indictments against me.”)

Observers of the Mueller investigation have compared it to the former F.B.I. director’s takedown of the notorious Gambino crime family. “Mueller’s doing a rollup just like he did with the Gambinos,” former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told Chris Whipple in a book adaptation recently published by the Hive. “[Paul] Manafort’s the caporegime, right? And [Rick] Gates is a made man!”

The news that Gates has apparently flipped follows a series of conflicting reports about the status of Gates’s legal team. On Thursday, The Daily Beast reported that the former deputy Trump campaign chairman fired his lawyer, Tom Green. But Green has dismissed the report to multiple outlets. (Green did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Hive.) Betsy Woodruff, the reporter for The Daily Beast who reported the firing stands by her work.) Three of Gates’s attorneys —Shanlon Wu, Walter Mack, and Annemarie McAvoy—did file a motion earlier this month to withdraw “immediately” from representing him, citing “irreconcilable differences.”