“They Are Looking for Even More Crimes”: Mueller Ramps Up His Maximum-Pressure Campaign
The more details of United States of America v. Paul Manafort Jr. that spill into public view, the more it seems that Robert Mueller’s interest in the former Trump campaign chairman extends well beyond any white-collar crimes Manafort may have committed while funneling consulting fees home from Ukraine. The irony is brutal: for months, Manafort’s legal team has argued that the charges against their client—conspiracy, tax fraud, lying to the F.B.I., among others—should be dismissed on the basis that Mueller’s grasp had exceeded his mandate to investigate Russian collusion. On Monday, however, the government delivered a one-two punch, revealing the existence of a memo empowering the special counsel to pursue any crimes arising from Manafort’s dealings in Ukraine and any crimes related to Russian interference in the 2016 election. “I don’t really understand what is left of your case,” a U.S. District Court Judge told Manafort’s lawyer on Wednesday. The following day, Mueller’s team filed an even more chilling set of documents, suggesting that Mueller could be pursuing a third batch of charges, which could potentially tie Manafort to the collusion question, too.
“It seems that the Manafort-Russia, as distinguished from the Manafort-Other-Crimes, aspect of the investigation is very active,” former White House counsel Bob Bauer told me, after reviewing the documents, which reveal that Mueller has obtained seven search-and-seizure warrants against Manafort, including a previously unreported warrant on March 9. Four of the seven warrants are partially redacted, according to the government, because they relate to “ongoing investigations that are not the subject of the current prosecutions involving Manafort.”
It remains to be seen whether those warrants indicate Mueller’s focus on Manafort has expanded beyond his lobbying work to include collusion with Russian officials in the 2016 campaign. “It is unlikely that some of the search warrants he obtained are related to proving charges that are in the indictments [already] against Manafort. In other words, it looks like they are looking for even more crimes to charge Manafort with,” former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti told me. The heavily redacted documents, however, leave much to the imagination: “What this tells us is that there is a long way to go in the Mueller investigation. They are working very hard and continuing to gather evidence, and there appears to be a lot left for them to investigate.”
Still, the timing of the latest warrant is curious, at the very least, coinciding with an aggressive expansion of Mueller’s inquest. In the past month, reports have emerged that the special counsel is interested in what Manafort’s alleged co-conspirator, former Trump official Rick Gates, knows about the campaign’s ties to Russia; that the government is investigating Gates’s and Manafort’s ties to alleged Russian intelligence agent Konstantin Kilimnik; that the Justice Department is strong-arming Russian oligarchs to find out whether money made its way from Moscow to Trump campaign coffers; and that F.B.I. agents stopped Ted Malloch, an informal adviser to the Trump campaign, in Boston as he returned from a trip abroad at the end of March (Malloch is scheduled to appear before a grand jury later this month).
It is not unheard of for a prosecutor to seek a warrant against an individual who has already been indicted, noted Sol Wisenberg, a Washington defense attorney who was deputy independent counsel in the Starr investigation. But it does raise red flags for any subjects of the Mueller investigation. “In this case, it wouldn’t be unusual to the extent that part of the warrant has to do with other things that aren’t related to Manafort, or to his indictment. That part wouldn’t be unusual in what appears to be a wide-ranging investigation like this,” Wisenberg told me. “But it typically is unusual to be seeking warrants against somebody who has already been indicted.”
Of the Mueller case, Wisenberg said, “It is obvious that they are getting some kind of information from Gates,” describing the latest developments as “very aggressive.” Mariotti, too, suggested that Mueller may be maneuvering to strengthen his hand. “What it tells us is that Mueller is continuing to investigate Manafort to put as much pressure on him as possible,” he explained. “Manafort is digging in his heels—he has a long fight ahead of him and Mueller wants to give himself as much leverage as possible to ensure that he wins.”
