NEWARK, N.J. _ A federal judge posed skeptical questions about Paul Manafort's claim that an FBI agent improperly searched a storage locker that held extensive business records before the former Trump campaign chairman was charged in two indictments.
Manafort claims that the records seized by the FBI should be suppressed because an agent was given access to the locker by a former employee of Manafort's political consulting firm who still had a key. At the time, that employee was working for a related Manafort business.
The agent surveyed the contents of the facility in Alexandria, Va., wrote a search warrant and got a judge's signature before the FBI returned the next day to seize thousands of records relating to Manafort's consulting firm.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, in a hearing in federal court in Washington on Wednesday, questioned Manafort's assertion that the ex-employee who gave access to the storage locker didn't have permission to do so.
"Where's the evidence that makes it unreasonable?" the judge asked a defense lawyer. "Where's the evidence that Mr. Manafort was exerting control of this space?"
Those seized records provided evidence that led to the indictment of Manafort in Washington on charges of money laundering and acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Ukraine. He's also charged in Alexandria with tax and bank fraud. Manafort's lawyers have argued that the former employee lacked the authority to let the agent into the storage unit, depriving Manafort of his constitutional right against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, who signed the indictments against Manafort as part of his probe into Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election, defends the agent's conduct, saying he acted properly. In a hearing Wednesday in federal court in Washington, the agent said the former employee consented to the initial warrantless search of Manafort's records.
Manafort's lawyers sought the hearing to determine if consent for the search was "freely and voluntarily given." Defense lawyers claim that beyond improperly entering Manafort's storage unit the first time, FBI agents seized far more records than they should have for the time period of the crimes they were investigating.
In court filings, Manafort's lawyers included a copy of the warrant and the supporting affidavit, which had several pages blacked out. The affidavit said the former employee had worked for Davis Manafort Partners and then Steam Mountain LLC, the other Manafort business.
The ex-employee told the agent that the unit was rented from Public Storage at 370 Holland Lane for $332 a month. The person, who had moved the files into the locker, signed a written consent for the agent and provided a key. The unit, measuring 10 feet by 25 feet, contained 21 bankers' boxes and a five-drawer cabinet, according to the affidavit.
The documents in the unit spanned three decades and included records of Manafort's investment in a New York film production company and his work as a Republican leader for presidential conventions in 1988, 1992 and 1996, according to the affidavit.
Agents were looking for records related to work by Manafort and his former right-hand man in Ukraine, Rick Gates, as well as documents involving several accounts in Cyprus that prosecutors later said were used to launder millions of dollars into the U.S. Gates has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with Mueller's investigation.
