Virginia Judge OKs Use Of Evidence From Raid On Manafort’s Home At Trial

Correction: The headline and the text of this story incorrectly said that Judge T.S. Ellis was the second judge to OK the use of evidence from Manafort’s home search at trial. At the time of Ellis’ decision, the judge in Manafort’s D.C. had not yet released her decision. She has since also denied Manafort’s request the surpress the evidence. We regret the error.

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort failed in convincing a judge to throw out evidence from a July 2017 FBI raid on his home.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis, who is overseeing Manafort’s case in Virginia, denied Manafort’s motion to keep the evidence gathered in the raid on Manafort’s Virginia residence from use at trial. Ellis in his opinion posted Wednesday said the warrant special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators obtained “satisfied the Fourth Amendment’s particularity and breadth requirements, and as such, suppression of the evidence recovered from the search of defendant’s residence is not warranted. ”

Manafort made a similar request in the case against him in D.C. The trial in Virginia is scheduled to begin later this month, while the D.C. trial is slated for September.

Manafort — who is facing charges for an assortment of alleged financial crimes, as well as failure to disclose foreign lobbying — has pleaded not guilty in both cases.

The early morning raid on Manafort’s residence drew attention to what some described as aggressive tactics by Mueller. (Mueller, in court filings, would rebut media reports that it was a no-knock raid).

Manafort, in his suppression request, argued that the warrant wasn’t specific enough in describing the evidence it sought to seize, and that its scope was broader than the probable cause on which it was based.

Read Ellis’ opinion rejecting those arguments below: