Richard Gates has reportedly been terminated from his job at a real estate company where he worked as a consultant to President Trump’s longtime friend, Tom Barrack.
Bloomberg News reported that Gates had been fired by Colony NorthStar Inc.
Gates — whose employment was week to week — worked at the firm as a consultant to Barrack, its executive chairman. He helped to advise on possible investments, according to Bloomberg.
{mosads}”He was working on investigating and understanding the next set of opportunities in digital infrastructure: data centers, radio towers, communications technology, media,” Barrack told the news outlet.
Barrack said Gates was “competent, capable and reliable,” according to Bloomberg.
Gates and Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, both pleaded not guilty Monday to charges stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election.
The charges are related to work Manafort and Gates did on behalf of a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine.
Mueller alleges they were paid tens of millions of dollars and laundered the money “in order to hide Ukraine payments from United States authorities.”
A spokesman for Gates said after the plea was entered that this “fight is just beginning.”
Barrack told Bloomberg it wasn’t appropriate for him to comment in the midst of an investigation.