MURPHY, Circuit Judge. Suppose a prosecutor told a district court that “a sentence at the top of a defendant’s guidelines range was at least appropriate under the relevant sentencing factors, if not required by them.” The court would likely understand the prosecutor to be arguing that such a sentence was legally permissible and perhaps even legally compelled. Now suppose that the prosecutor told the court that “a sentence at least at the top of the defendant’s guidelines range was appropriate.” The court would likely take the prosecutor to be arguing that such a sentence was the minimally acceptable one and that an above-guidelines sentence might also be justified.

This case requires us to consider which of these two ideas the prosecutor conveyed during Manuel Estrada-Gonzalez’s sentencing for illegally reentering the country. Estrada-Gonzalez claims that the prosecutor impliedly recommended an above-guidelines sentence by stating that a sentence at the “high end of the sentencing guideline range would be at the least appropriate in this case.” Sent. Tr., R.29, PageID 140. He thus argues that the prosecutor breached the parties’ plea agreement, which barred her from “suggest[ing] in any way” that the court should vary above the guidelines range. Agreement, R.16, PageID 67. Yet the district court that heard this ambiguous statement in real time rejected Estrada-Gonzalez’s reading of it, finding instead that the prosecutor had been advocating only “for a sentence at the high range of the guidelines.” Sent. Tr., R.29, PageID 146. And while our precedent instructs us to review the ultimate question whether a prosecutor’s conduct breached a plea agreement de novo, see United States v. Warren, 8 F.4th 444, 448 (6th Cir. 2021), we clarify in this case that we must review any subsidiary findings about the historical facts under the deferential clear-error standard. What the prosecutor expressed with her statement is that type of fact question. Because the district court did not clearly err in its resolution of the question, the government did not breach the plea agreement. We thus affirm.