FBI Raided Manafort Home Early AM, July 26

Posted by Tina

Despite the fact that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been cooperating in the Russia Probe conducted by Special Counsel Mueller a warrant was obtained in July and an early morning raid on his personal residence was conducted by the FBI:

Federal agents reportedly appeared at Manafort’s home without advance warning two weeks ago, in the predawn hours on Wednesday, July 26, the day after he met voluntarily with the staff for the Senate Intelligence Committee. The WaPo reports that the served search warrant was “wide-ranging and FBI agents working with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III departed the home with various records.”

The raid came as Manafort has been voluntarily producing documents to congressional committees investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. The search warrant indicates investigators may have argued to a federal judge they had reason to believe Manafort could not be trusted to turn over all records in response to a grand jury subpoena.

It could also have been intended to send a message to President Trump’s former campaign chairman that he should not expect gentle treatment or legal courtesies from Mueller’s team.

Among the documents taken were materials Manafort had already provided to Congress, WaPo’s sources said. “If the FBI wanted the documents, they could just ask [Manafort] and he would have turned them over,” said one adviser close to the White House. Clearly, the intention was different.

As ABC adds, the Trump campaign sent over more than 20,000 pages of documents to the committee last Wednesday, which was the deadline to submit documents, and Manafort handed over about 400 pages, including his foreign-advocacy paperwork, on the same day, according to the spokesperson. Additionally, Trump Jr. submitted about 250 pages on Friday.

He could have avoided the trauma to his family had he only been as shrewd as Lois Lerner or, better yet, Hillary Clinton…a little BleachBit, a few (30,000) deeted emails, smashed phones, and loads of snarky vagueries:

“What, like with a cloth or something?”

“Those messages disappear all by themselves.”

“No more secrecy. No more zone of privacy. After all, what good did that do for me?”

The White House wouldn’t have been hacked “had they been using my server.”

“Maybe the heat is getting to everybody.”

Whether or not this investigation leads to criminal prosecution the double standard gets stinkier and stinkier!

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10 Responses to FBI Raided Manafort Home Early AM, July 26

  1. Carl Copas says:

    A “warrent”?

  2. Tina says:

    Thank you Carl…that would be a “warrant.” My bad. I’ll be sure to fix that!

    But hey, we can be friendly, nice of you to drop by even if it’s just to correct me.

  3. Tina says:

    LOL…I notice I also spelled deleted, “deeted”…’spose it could be my Rheumatoid Arthritis?

  4. J. Soden says:

    A co-operating witness is not usually subjected to a pre-dawn raid.
    And, having served on a grand jury such as Mueller has convened, the notion that a “grand jury could be used to indict a ham sandwich” is absolutely true.
    Gonna have to wait and see . . . . .

    • Tina says:

      Right on J!

      FOX News interviewed one of Trumps lawyers:

      A top lawyer for President Trump slammed the special counsel’s office over the FBI raid of former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s Virginia home…

      (John) Dowd, in his note, questioned the validity of the search warrant itself, calling it an “extraordinary invasion of privacy.” Dowd said Manafort already was looking to cooperate with congressional committees and said the special counsel never requested the materials from Manafort.

      “These failures by Special Counsel to exhaust less intrusive methods is a fatal flaw in the warrant process and would call for a Motion to Suppress the fruits of the search,” Dowd wrote, arguing the required “necessity” of the warrant was “misrepresented to the Court which raises a host of issues involving the accuracy of the warrant application and the supporting FBI affidavit.”

      Dowd also said agents seized “privileged and confidential materials prepared for Mr. Manafort by his counsel to aid him in his cooperation with the Congressional committees,” adding: “Thus, it appears the Search Warrant here was obtained by a gross abuse of the judicial process by the Special Counsel’s office. In addition, given the obvious unlawful deficiencies, this extraordinary invasive tool was employed for its shock value to try to intimidate Mr. Manafort and bring him to his needs [knees?]. These methods are normally found and employed in Russia not America.”

      • Chris says:

        Why do you believe he is cooperating?

        • JihadiJoe says:

          “Why do you believe he is cooperating?”

          Stupid question. Why do you think the lawyer is a liar?

          Dowd said Manafort already was looking to cooperate with congressional committees and said the special counsel never requested the materials from Manafort.

          Dowd also said agents seized “privileged and confidential materials prepared for Mr. Manafort by his counsel to aid him in his cooperation with the Congressional committees,” adding: “Thus, it appears the Search Warrant here was obtained by a gross abuse of the judicial process by the Special Counsel’s office. In addition, given the obvious unlawful deficiencies, this extraordinary invasive tool was employed for its shock value to try to intimidate Mr. Manafort and bring him to his needs [knees?]. These methods are normally found and employed in Russia not America.”

  5. Peggy says:

    Hummm, heard this morning a judge ordered the State Dept. to turn over Benghazi emails from Hillary and her staff after it was learned the dept’s. server was never searched during the congressional investigation by Trey Gowdy.

    Will they use a hammer or bleach-byte to cover up more evidence?

    Oh, and the judge was an Obama appointee. Could justice finally be served?

    • Tina says:

      Peggy I can’t keep up with everything that’s going on these days. But we certainly can surmise that investigations into Hillary’s many corrupt and incompetent practices were sloppy and/or purposely insufficient.

      The <a href="http://freebeacon.com/politics/federal-judge-orders-state-department-search-clintons-benghazi-emails/Freebeacon reports:

      U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled Tuesday that the State Department did not do enough to “track down messages Clinton may have sent about the assault on the U.S. diplomatic compound on Sept. 11, 2012 — an attack that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya,” Politico reported:

      In response to Freedom of Information Act requests, State searched the roughly 30,000 messages Clinton turned over to her former agency at its request in December 2014 after officials searching for Benghazi-related records realized she had used a personal email account during her four-year tenure as secretary.

      State later searched tens of thousands of emails handed over to the agency by three former top aides to Clinton: Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan. Finally, State searched a collection of emails the FBI assembled when it was investigating Clinton’s use of the private account and server.

      In all, State found 348 Benghazi-related messages or documents that were sent to or from Clinton in a period of nearly five months after the attack.

      Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, said the State Department’s initial search was not good enough because it didn’t search the email accounts of Clinton’s top aides for relevant messages pertaining to Benghazi.

      Mehta, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, agreed with Judicial Watch in a 10-page ruling.

      An opposing opinion is that “searching other employees’ accounts would set a bad precedent…” Good grief! Haven’t there been enough “bad precedents” set by Hillary herself and those who supposedly investigated? They didn’t bother to put her or her staff under oath. They kept the investigation very narrow so as to avoid the discomfort (embarrasement) of a full investigation that might fully reveal the criminality going on under Obama and Hillary.

  6. J. Soden says:

    And FINALLY, Taxifornia has been added to the Judicial Watch list of states who need to clean up their voter rolls or get sued!

    http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-warns-california-clean-voter-registration-lists-face-federal-lawsuit/

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