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The Manafort Search Warrant Was an FBI Stunt
According to news reports, the FBI conducted a “pre-dawn raid” at Manafort’s Virginia home, which began at 6:00 a.m. in late July. There was no legitimate reason to roust Paul Manafort and his family out of bed to serve the search warrant.
The federal search warrant form (form AO 93) gives the issuing judge two options related to the time the warrant is to be served or executed. It can be served during the daytime, which is defined as 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Or it can be executed “at any time in the day or night because good cause has been established.”
It appears that the warrant was a “documents” warrant for financial, tax, and other business records. A documents warrant is typically executed at a reasonable time during the day and not during a “pre-dawn raid.”
Examples of “good cause” for authorizing the execution of a warrant at night would be if the government established that it was necessary for officer safety, to prevent the destruction of evidence, or to prevent the flight of a suspect. Executing search warrants at night increases the danger to the officers and is usually done only in cases involving violent crimes, such as drugs, firearms, gangs, bank robberies, etc.
The fact that the agents executed the warrant at 6:00 a.m. indicates that it was a daytime warrant. The only purpose in executing the warrant before dawn was to intimidate Paul Manafort. The FBI and the Special Counsel should be called out on this.
It’s long past the point in time for the government to produce evidence of actual collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. If no such evidence exists, the investigation should be shut down.
Published in General
Nonsense. If they were after Trump’s taxes they would have gotten them from the IRS.
Gary, I get it that you hate Trump. However, you’re putting the cart before the horse with phrases like “above the law” and “obstruct justice”. What law are you referring to? What injustice? If you can’t even define that, if you need to launch an investigation simply to justify your conclusion that justice has been obstructed or that law has been broken, then this is nothing more than a prime example of a “witch hunt”.
Otherwise, I’ve heard that you beat your wife and fondle little children. I don’t have any evidence yet aside from mean rumors I heard, but that’s exactly why we need an investigation. Isn’t that how it works?
By the way, anticipating a flag on comment #32: that was not said in anger or seriousness. I’m merely illustrating my point. Starkly, to be sure.
The first paragraph is a complete fabrication. The second makes no sense. The third is a conspiracy theory.
Agreed. Further, I’m all for an investigation of specific allegations having some reasonable basis; then we can investigate who caused what and who did what and why and to what effect. Otherwise, this is nothing more than what I wrote in comment #32.
While I am a lawyer, I practice family law. It took two years to wrap up Watergate. Does that sound about reasonable?
At least he had to answer to somebody. Trump hasn’t.
I am ignoring the last paragraph. The problem is that we are mid-investigation. Given that Mueller, Comey and Rosenstein served both Republican and Democratic administration has me not concerned about their fair-mindedness.
Of course you’re ignoring the last paragraph. Obstructing justice I see. All the more reason to investigate. Why won’t you cooperate with the fair minded investigators Gary? Do you have something to hide?
Served the swamp that has two factions that want the same thing: power. Now you do not have to ascribe any virtuous intentions on the part of Trump, but he is an outsider that has interfered in their rackets. This is outsider vs insider, not Republican vs Democrat and anyway from where I sit, most Republicans and Democrats are one in the same.
Okay, for the benefit of the slow kids in the audience, how did Obama answer to these people? For example, what did he say to assuage the concerns of Republicans on the passage of Obamacare?
And this is why it is all a put up by the DNC and their CIA stooges:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-10/why-some-u-s-ex-spies-don-t-buy-the-russia-story
Can the administrators delete all of these perseverating, off-point comments about Trump, his taxes, his dad’s Alzheimers’?
This gestapo raid on Manafort has nothing. Whatsoever. To. Do. With Trump’s tax returns,
nor with a well-documented, increasingly severe obsession with Trump’s relationship with his father.
This is about the fifth time you’ve used that phrase about Trump not having “to answer to anyone”–
as though most of us, as adults, regularly get called on the carpet by an irate, aged progenitor to defend our decisions and actions. Truly pathetic.
Love it. Hillary and all the Dems treated with kid gloves. Others, not so much.
I’m beginning to think we need to demolish a bunch of the Alphabet Agencies and start again.
@smilinjack, great post. Too bad it’s been hijacked.
There is no one in this country who should not be horrified that this was done to Manafort. The man is cooperating with an ongoing investigation. Did they think he had, like, an incriminating private journal, on paper, in a roll-top desk at home, like John Wilkes? What could they possibly have found that they couldn’t get more efficiently electronically? No–‘fraid they wanted to rouse the neighbors and terrify the family. Mission accomplished! I picture ’em kicking in the door with a grunt: “That’s for Jim Comey!”
Trump is becoming more and more erratic. He is fighting with Mitch McConnell. He thanks Putin for expelling over 700 diplomats. He says that his campaign manager, Paul Manafort was barely invovled with his campaign. He mocks a nuclear North Korea. He attacks individual Republicans, Senators Heller, Flake and Murkowski.
Trump is a modern day Captain Queeg. His followers attack conservatives who point out the massive mistake the party made in nominating this whiny bully, and party leadership made by allowing him on the debate stage without revealing his taxes. At the convention, party leaders squelched a vote to allow delegates to reject this dangerous man.
I’ve seen this motion picture before in 1974. Until Nixon resigned, polls said that he still had a majority support of Republicans.
It is patent nonsense to argue that the FBI investigation of Paul Manafort was wrong. The FBI could not execute their search warrant without the prior written permission of a federal judge.
It is time to return to first principles. Trump does not adhere to basic political, emotional and mental health norms. If he had been the CEO of a normal company, he would have been removed by his board of directors long ago.
America has had 44 Presidents. We have Lincoln, Washington and Reagan as our President. Now we have an emotionally unstable person as President. Impeachment was included by our founders to guard against a Trump, and his Cult of Personality of Our Dear Leader. In the nuclear era, the 25th Amendment was duly added by Congress and 3/4 of the states. Agnew was forced out due to illegal behavior.
We should be thankful that the FBI executed their judicially approved search warrant on Paul Manafort, so that our Republic can be protected from Trump. Ours is a nation of laws. Trump was duly elected under the constitution. And Trump can be removed under the constitution, by impeachment or the 25th Amendment.
Firstly, the republicans that voted for Trump in the primaries didn’t care what was in the tax records and don’t care what’s on medical report. Secondly, those of us who voted for Trump in the general election are pretty pleased with many of the things he has done. We can ignore and not react to every little thing the MSM insists is important news regarding a tweet, employment decision at the WH or other.
Gary, there is no one here who loves Trump as much as you hate him. If someone has gone overboard on this subject it is you.
Calm down before you stroke out.
Except when it comes to Democrats and their allies
And we can punish those who do so, under the Constitution. By the ballot box.
But the whole freaking point of the last 9 years is that it is no longer a nation of laws but the proverbial nation of men. And your kind seeks to turbocharge that by applying the laws to people you perceive as your enemies in ways you do not apply to your friends.
Imagine Jeff Sessions had appointed me his number two, and I then appointed a special counsel to investigate individuals associated with the Clinton campaign. And my special counsel then hired a bunch of attorneys connected to Trump. And they then had FBI do no-knock raids on people like the Podestas.
Being Republican does not ensure one’s “fair-mindedness”. Case in point: you.
It doesn’t really matter one way or the other as there is no proof that Alzheimer’s is hereditary.
As for the “magic bullet” of tax returns, the overwhelming majority of Americans do not understand their own taxes let alone someone’s like Donald Trump. As politicized as the IRS has become under John Koskinen (and why he is still there baffles me) if there was anything slightly fishy with Trump’s filings I’m sure it would have come out long before this.
And who, exactly, do you charge with this vetting process? The news media? Donald Trump has been a public figure since 1979 when Wayne Barrett of The Village Voice became obsessed with him. Barrett’s files on Trump have basically become a shrine to print journalists obsessed with bringing Trump down. (Barrett, ironically passed away on January 19th of this year, the day before Trump took the oath of office.) If Barrett was unable to provide a smoking gun in 37 years of digging, who can?
Except for business partners, investors, banks, government employees (if you don’t think this is so, try opening a business anywhere in a major city), and others.
In most respects, he’s had more experience at “answering to someone” than any Democrat President. Certainly more than Hillary or Obama, every respect.
He might not have had a direct boss since his dad turned the business over to him, but he certainly had to answer to people with power over him.
Also, the idea that Trump releasing his tax returns would quiet any of this is fatuous at best. Jr. released the email string regarding his Russia meeting. Was that interpreted as a sign he had nothing to hide? Hardly.
Instead, I’m positive if he released his returns that the press would have a field day putting the worst spin possible on every deduction on every return. They’d be cause for him to release even more information and even more evidence he has something to hide.
This is a blatant case of Beria’s “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”. This should be obvious.
Apparently, in order to restore the Rule of Law we need no-knock raids on Republicans while simultaneously exonerating Democrats with as little investigation as possible, despite there being far more evidence they’ve committed crimes.
Some Republicans seem far more worried about Trump not getting fried for potential abuses than Democrats not being even investigated for obvious ones, and that worries me.
Oh, come on. Like Comey says, Hillary didn’t mean to.
I do not think that it has been substantiated that this was a “no knock” warrant, only a warrant that allowed for it to be served at any time. If you have evidence that it was a “no knock” warrant, please substantiate.
Are you incapable of using a search engine? Nobody has denied this.
No knock or not it was strictly theater. Early morning raid with the press tipped off for maximum effect.
Mean while Hillary gets an interview with Comey with no recording, no oath, no notes, no other witnesses.
But we’re a Nation of Laws.