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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
Doesn’t fit the Pravda of his anti Trump Crusade.
May I point out that employers or parents who treat their employees or grown children like little kids tend to be terrible people? Adults get to be treated like adults. That’s normal. What is screwed up is expecting that we ought to be okay with some other adult human hovering over us.
This repetitive theme about about”answering to” someone… some stern, authoritarian father-figure…? .gee, sounds like somebody likes a good spanking! Ooooh ohh daddy! Don’t…..stop! I will be a better boy!
Its fun to watch NeverTrump go the full Stalin.
There is literally nothing to even investigate.
If there is no body, no witnesses, and no missing person is there a murder?
Basically this is straight up Stalinist, and accomplishes nothing except undercut the legitimacy of the state and the rule of law.
And what the IRS did has a substantially more chilling effect on our democracy than anything Trump might have done. Yet Obama claimed that he was certain there wasn’t a “smidgen of corruption” before the investigation by his own donor was even concluded.
Sure, the anti-Trumpers object to stuff like that from time to time, but it’s only Trump that gets them to really see red and complain post after post, article after article, comment after comment.
It reminds me of Obama after a terror attack calmly rebuking the terrorists, only showing genuine anger after he started talking about Republicans, this showing who he really viewed as the enemy.
Democrats clearly and repeatedly trash the Rule of Law, and it’s a minor annoyance. Trump seems like he might have, and it’s war.
And now there is a link in Instapundit to The American Spectator about Brennan being the initiator of this Trump collusion nonsense. And if the DNC e-mail scandal turns outs to be a leak, not a hack, then what? I have to stop reading the news because I cannot take it anymore.
You know what? Scott Walker was my first choice. When he exited the race, everyone praised him for his moral courage, and when he said that what needed to happen was for the other candidates to agree who should be the not-Trump candidate and everyone to drop out, I heard people agreeing with it. That didn’t happen. I’m perfectly willing to agree that it was a mistake to nominate him, but I feel no responsibility to try and clean up a mess that wasn’t of my making.
So when do we empanel a grand jury to investigate the DNC?
Nice post.
Only the Sith deal in absolutes.
I’m opposed to anything but voluntary disclosure of a candidates’ tax returns. They are nothing more than a stick for your opponents and the media, but I repeat myself, to beat you with.
Can anyone name one person elected to the Presidency since 1917 who would not have been elected if we had had their tax returns? I think not.
An interesting wrinkle. But I don’t find their results conclusive either.
We are owed an explanation of the evidence allegedly collected by the intelligence community. I think the whole consensus assessment stuff is suspect and they are going to hide behind sources and methods. My suspicion is their actual evidence has the consistency of a wedding night negligee.
No, you haven’t. Nobody has.
The entirety of Watergate involved potential criminal acts by administration officials. There were already criminal concvictions, the burglars, before Cox was appointed in 1973 and the Senate committee was formed. Haldeman, Erlichman, Mitchell, Dean and Magruder were already under investigation and or prosecution for conspiracy and obstruction.
In sum, there was a there there.
Transparent and supportive?
Sweaty and clingy?
Thin and slippery?
Unused and in the way?
This is a show of force by the Deep State. Message received? It will not be trifled with. Someone like Trump, with his sights set on making Americans’ lives better and neglecting the 4th branch (bureaucracy) when he’s not outright opposed to it… well, he must be stopped. Manafort is a means to that end, and the method sends a message.
Kind of hard to keep one’s mind on FBI stunts with posts like that around.
No, what we are arguing is that there has been no evidence of a crime , The order is crime first then investigation as to the perp, this investigation started with the perp we’re after then investigate him and his until we find a crime. I’d be filing ethics complaints on the lot of them, Mueller and his whole team of Hillary donors.
What we’re actually arguing is that, since the “case” against Trump has turned up basically nothing in the last YEAR (not “this instant”), there is no actual “case.”
That’s the thing about a “nation of laws.” You’re supposed to be protected from malicious and unfair prosecution. It should not be possible for a political party to keep unfairly hounding someone for years on end, just because they lost an election.
I will add to the idea that some of us opposed to the talk of impeaching Trump etc. do think that while it wasn’t impermissible to investigate, since they haven’t found anything yet, they should stop.
Of course, it could be that they have found something and they just want to investigate more before bringing charges, but I would expect them to tell someone that before being disbanded.
Back to the issue though. If there is no crime committed by Trump or associates (no, the Trump Jr meeting was not a crime), then there is no reasonable suspicion to even start an investigation.
Think about any other legal case. First, the government must show that they have “reasonable suspicion” right? So, where is the reasonable suspicion that Trump committed a crime? Also, the investigation should follow from the potential crime. Auditing tax records from ten years ago wouldn’t be included in an investigation into whether campaign associates illegally worked with other countries.
Also, Trump’s campaign having worked with people who worked with foreign countries does not give enough suspicion on Trump himself, nor does firing the FBI director, to justify investigating Trump himself or his family. First, they would have to prove that individuals did wrong then that the campaign did something wrong. Even then, they would still need evidence that Trump himself was involved in order to investigate Trump. Of course, Trump being the head of the campaign would likely make that last step pretty easy.
However, to wrap up, I think that unless the investigators release some information that is damning to people currently in power, the investigation should quickly become viewed as a which hunt and be shut down. If they release something that makes a good case as to why they are still needed, okay. But otherwise, they can’t keep investigating non crimes. Not the DOJ anyways.
I would actually rather have congress investigate Trump than the DOJ. Congress has oversight authority, in this case I believe that oversight of the electoral process should fall within their jurisdiction. The DOJ is in charge of enforcing the law, in this case, I don’t see many laws being broken.