The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's
talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
Following through, this is a keep. He doesn't meet any of the criteria of BLP1E:
He's not covered only in the context of a single event, having been discussed as a top Trump campaign aide and Manafort associate
[1] in the context of the
Melania Trump speech plagiarism controversy[2][3] and as a "top Trump delegate wrangler" at the 2016 Republican National Convention
[4]. His criminal activities, although mostly apparently relating to a period in which he worked for pro-Russian figures in Ukraine, have a number of different facets, from failing to register as a Ukranian foreign agent to various kinds of financial crimes committed against and with Manafort. The recent NYT story, about his discussions with an Israeli firm relating to paid pro-Trump
astroturfing of unclear legality, is another distinct activity for which he has now received reliable coverage. All of this is separate from, although relevant to, his notability as a prime source for the
Mueller investigation.
He doesn't seem to be
a low-profile individual outside of his criminal involvement, having spoken to the press as a Trump campaign aide
[5] and co-founded an advocacy nonprofit,
America First Policies.
I suppose it's something of a political question whether the whole Trump-Russia thing is a "significant event" or series of events, but we have a dozen articles on aspects of it. Gates's role in it, now that he's been convicted and a star witness for Mueller, is definitely substantial [and] well documented[6][7].
There's also
WP:CRIME, which has a similar standard: keep perpetrators only if the crime was a well-documented historic event, with sustained coverage of the event in reliable secondary sources which persists beyond contemporaneous news coverage and devotes significant attention to the individual's role. It's a pretty safe bet that historians will be looking closely at the Trump-Russia investigation for decades to come, heavily relying on and interrogating Gates's testimony.
WP:BLPCRIME is important, but at this point Gates is an involuntary
public figure if he wasn't a limited public figure in the domain of Republican politics already.
Overall, the article should be careful to allocate
WP:DUE attention to the various aspects of Gates's life as they have been recorded in reliable sources (e.g. the blow-by-blow of his trial developments should be cut), but he's the kind of major figure of lasting historical significance that BLP1E correctly says an encyclopedia should include.
FourViolas (
talk)
19:30, 10 October 2018 (UTC)reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's
talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.