At a hearing scheduled in Virginia federal court Friday afternoon, lawyers working with Manafort are expected to discuss a sentencing timeline with US District Judge T.S. Ellis, who has told the legal teams Manafort should be sentenced soon. Prosecutors have said they wouldn't oppose moving his case along.
Prosecutors also indicated this week they may be willing to drop 10 charges Manafort still faces after a jury couldn't reach a unanimous agreement on them at his trial.
Even if those charges were dropped, Manafort may face a sentence of a decade or more in prison.
Manafort was convicted of eight tax fraud and banking crimes by a Virginia jury in August. He later pleaded guilty before a different judge in DC to two criminal counts of conspiracy and obstruction of justice, setting in motion his cooperation deal to assist the special counsel's probe into the 2016 presidential election.
The 69-year-old former Trump campaign chairman has been in jail since June, when a judge revoked his bail. He will be in court Friday, marking the first time he's been seen in a green inmate uniform since his convictions.
At Friday's hearing, Ellis may try to pull new details out of the Mueller team about Manafort's recent cooperation. Earlier this week, CNN reported that Manafort's visits with the special counsel have stretched over at least nine days since he cut a deal a month ago, indicating he's shared dozens of hours' worth of details about Russians and Trump campaign affiliates.
Even if Manafort were sentenced in Virginia for his jury convictions in the coming weeks, prosecutors could return to court at a later date to ask the judge to revise his sentence if he's especially helpful to them.
Manafort's trial and admissions of guilt focused on his lobbying work for pro-Russian Ukrainians and barely touched his time in the Trump campaign. It's not yet known the extent of his contacts with Russians and Ukrainians throughout 2016, though Mueller is believed to have closely examined allegations that Manafort coordinated with the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Manafort is central to several of the most notable moments of 2016. He was an attendee of the Trump Tower meeting where Russians purportedly offered information to the campaign that could hurt Hillary Clinton; he offered private briefings on the campaign to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska; and he was instrumental at the Republican National Convention when the party softened its stance on Ukraine.
Manafort also stayed in touch through this year with his Russian associate Konstantin Kilimnik, whom prosecutors say has ties to the same Russian military intelligence operation that allegedly hacked the Democrats during the election.
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