Exclusive: US government wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman
Manafort wiretapped under secret court orders 06:21
Washington (CNN)US
investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort
under secret court orders before and after the election, sources tell
CNN, an extraordinary step involving a high-ranking campaign official
now at the center of the Russia meddling probe.
The
government snooping continued into early this year, including a period
when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump.
Some
of the intelligence collected includes communications that sparked
concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians
to help with the campaign, according to three sources familiar with the
investigation. Two of these sources, however, cautioned that the
evidence is not conclusive.
Special
counsel Robert Mueller's team, which is leading the investigation into
Russia's involvement in the election, has been provided details of these
communications.
A
secret order authorized by the court that handles the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) began after Manafort became the
subject of an FBI investigation that began in 2014. It centered on work
done by a group of Washington consulting firms for Ukraine's former
ruling party, the sources told CNN.
The surveillance was discontinued at some point last year for lack of evidence, according to one of the sources.
The FBI then restarted the surveillance after obtaining a new FISA warrant that extended at least into early this year.
Sources
say the second warrant was part of the FBI's efforts to investigate
ties between Trump campaign associates and suspected Russian
operatives. Such warrants require the approval of top Justice Department
and FBI officials, and the FBI must provide the court with information
showing suspicion that the subject of the warrant may be acting as an
agent of a foreign power.
It
is unclear when the new warrant started. The FBI interest deepened last
fall because of intercepted communications between Manafort and
suspected Russian operatives, and among the Russians themselves, that
reignited their interest in Manafort, the sources told CNN. As part of
the FISA warrant, CNN has learned that earlier this year, the FBI
conducted a search of a storage facility belonging to Manafort. It's not
known what they found.
The
conversations between Manafort and Trump continued after the President
took office, long after the FBI investigation into Manafort was publicly
known, the sources told CNN. They went on until lawyers for the
President and Manafort insisted that they stop, according to the
sources.
It's unclear whether Trump himself was picked up on the surveillance.
The White House declined to comment for this story. A spokesperson for Manafort didn't comment for this story.
Manafort
previously has denied that he ever "knowingly" communicated with
Russian intelligence operatives during the election and also has denied
participating in any Russian efforts to "undermine the interests of the
United States."
The FBI wasn't
listening in June 2016, the sources said, when Donald Trump Jr. led a
meeting that included Manafort, then campaign chairman, and Jared
Kushner, the President's son-in-law, with a Russian lawyer who had
promised negative information on Hillary Clinton.
That
gap could prove crucial as prosecutors and investigators under Mueller
work to determine whether there's evidence of a crime in myriad
connections that have come to light between suspected Russian government
operatives and associates of Trump.
Origins of the FBI's interest in Manafort
The
FBI interest in Manafort dates back at least to 2014, partly as an
outgrowth of a US investigation of Viktor Yanukovych, the former
Ukrainian president whose pro-Russian regime was ousted amid street
protests. Yanukovych's Party of Regions was accused of corruption, and
Ukrainian authorities claimed he squirreled millions of dollars out of
the country.
Investigators have
spent years probing any possible role played by Manafort's firm and
other US consultants, including the Podesta Group and Mercury LLC, that
worked with the former Ukraine regime. The basis for the case hinged on
the failure by the US firms to register under the US Foreign Agents
Registration Act, a law that the Justice Department only rarely uses to
bring charges.
All three firms earlier this year filed retroactive registrations with the Justice Department.
It hasn't proved easy to make a case.
Last
year, Justice Department prosecutors concluded that there wasn't enough
evidence to bring charges against Manafort or anyone of the other US
subjects in the probe, according to sources briefed on the
investigation.
The FBI and Justice Department have to periodically seek renewed FISA authorization to continue their surveillance.
As
Manafort took the reins as Trump campaign chairman in May, the FBI
surveillance technicians were no longer listening. The fact he was part
of the campaign didn't play a role in the discontinued monitoring,
sources told CNN. It was the lack of evidence relating to the Ukraine
investigation that prompted the FBI to pull back.
Renewed surveillance
Manafort
was ousted from the campaign in August. By then the FBI had noticed
what counterintelligence agents thought was a series of odd connections
between Trump associates and Russia. The CIA also had developed
information, including from human intelligence sources, that they
believed showed Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered his
intelligence services to conduct a broad operation to meddle with the US
election, according to current and former US officials.
The FBI surveillance teams, under a new FISA warrant, began monitoring Manafort again, sources tell CNN.
The
court that oversees government snooping under FISA operates in secret,
the surveillance so intrusive that the existence of the warrants only
rarely become public.
For
that reason, speculation has run rampant about whether Manafort or
others associated with Trump were under surveillance. The President
himself fueled the speculation when in March he used his Twitter account
to accuse former President Barack Obama of having his "wires tapped" in
Trump Tower.
The Justice Department and the FBI have denied that Trump's own "wires" were tapped.
While Manafort has a residence in Trump Tower, it's unclear whether FBI surveillance of him took place there.
Manafort has a home as well in Alexandria, Virginia. FBI agents raided the Alexandria residence in July.
The FBI also eavesdropped on Carter Page,
a campaign associate that then candidate Trump once identified as a
national security adviser. Page's ties to Russia, including an attempt
by Russian spies to cultivate him, prompted the FBI to obtain a FISA
court warrant in 2014.
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