Manafort challenges evidence seized by Mueller
This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by Maeve (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).
Source: The Hill
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort filed a motion late Friday to suppress evidence special counsel Robert Muellers team found in a storage locker in Virginia.
Manafort is claiming that Mueller unlawfully had access to the business records in the unit because a former Manafort employer listed on the lease allowed entry. According to Manafort, the employee didnt have the authority to allow a FBI agent into the unit.
During that visit, agent didnt seize any records but entered and observed a number of boxes and a filing cabinet inside the premises, as well as some writing on the sides of some boxes, according to the filing.
The agent wrote and signed an affidavit in favor of a search of the storage unit the next day, in May 2017, using information he had obtained during his warrantless search to argue in favor of a warrant to search and seize documents from the unit, the court documents state.
Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/382068-manafort-files-to-suppress-evidence-seized-by-mueller
https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/paul-manafort-says-the-fbi-illegally-searched-a-storage?utm_term.riW0XjEG3#.maYJvYPd4
In Friday night's filing, Manafort's lawyers argue that by the time the FBI returned to get the documents, the search was already "fundamentally flawed" because the former employee of Davis Manafort Partners was not authorized to consent to a search of the unit.
Manafort's lawyers acknowledge that the "former low-level employee" was "named as an occupant on the lease agreement" — in fact, he is the only occupant named on the lease. They go on to argue, however, that he was so named "simply for administrative convenience and only because he happened to be the DMP employee tasked with setting up the storage lease on DMP’s behalf and moving DMP’s business records into the unit."
The lawyers claim that their argument is "bolstered" by the fact that "Mr. Manafort appears on the agreement as the only person with authorized access to the storage unit," though that appears to be a misreading of the agreement. The lease has a line for listing the "Occupant's Authorized Access Persons" — meaning people authorized by the occupant to access the unit. By the terms of the lease, the occupant was the "former low-level employee"; Manafort's was the only name listed as an authorized access person by the occupant.
Manafort's lawyers also question whether the former DMP employee's "purported consent" to the search was voluntary. They asked Judge Amy Berman Jackson to hold a hearing on the matter.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/07/politics/paul-manafort-court-filing/index.html?srtwCNN040718paul-manafort-court-filing1057AMVODtop
Manafort's attorneys say an investigator looked around the unit with the help of a former low-level employee of Manafort's who wasn't authorized to give them that permission. A day later, investigators used a warrant to collect the business documents within it. Both the initial visit and the raid violated Manafort's constitutional protections, his attorneys argued Friday.
close dialog
During the search, FBI agents grabbed boxes of Manafort's business records, which covered his work for Ukrainian politicians and in a movie production business, according to the filing. An FBI agent said in an affidavit it believed Manafort might also have records in the boxes of his business relationship and legal tangle with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who was sanctioned by the Trump administration Friday.
Prosecutors have said they've shielded Manafort and public from seeing descriptions in the warrant documentation that could reveal their ongoing investigation. In line with that approach, prosecutors had redacted several pages of an FBI agent's affidavit used to obtain the storage unit warrant, Friday's filing showed.
Manafort and associates had paid a little more than $300 a month since 2015 to rent the large metal-walled room to hold his business records, on Holland Lane in Alexandria, according to the filing. It held 21 boxes of paperwork and a metal filing cabinet that appeared to be filled with documents dating back decades, investigators said, according to the filing. In addition to records about Manafort and Gates and their Ukrainian clients, investigators were looking for documents related to the now-defunct lobbying firm Podesta Group, which also did international lobbying and was run by the brother of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman.
HERE IS THE MOTION:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4433460-Suppress.html
Lawyers: was Mueller obligated to know that the former employee shouldn't have given them access?
= new reply since forum marked as read
