By Monday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team will have handed over to Paul Manafort’s and Rick Gates’ attorneys 400,000 items of evidence in its case against the two former Trump campaign officials as part of the pre-trial discovery process, according to a court document Mueller filed Friday.
The filing, ahead of a status conference slated for Monday, sheds additional light on aspects of Mueller’s investigation into Manafort and Gates. The two men were charged with tax evasion, money laundering and failure to disclose lobbying for foreign agents as part of Mueller’s larger Russia probe. They both have pleaded not guilty.
The 400,000 documents include “financial records, records from vendors identified in the indictment, email communications involving the defendants, and corporate records,” Mueller’s filing said. Mueller also has turned over copies of material found on 36 devices, including laptops, phones and thumb drives. Those devices were obtained in a previously reported early morning raid of Manafort’s home in Virginia in late July.
The filing said that “copies of search warrants and related applications for two searches conducted as part of the investigation were also provided.” It is unclear if the second search is separate from the raid originally reported on Manafort’s home. All told, “copies of fifteen search/seizure warrants and related applications” are being turned over to the defense.
Mueller’s discovery production has happened in four phases, starting on Nov. 17 — two days after the judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson Berman, imposed an order limiting access to the discovery evidence to the parties involved in the case — and continuing on Nov. 22, Dec. 1, and on Friday.
Among the evidence produced on Nov. 17 were “documents from Manafort’s tax preparer that were identified by the government as particularly relevant,” Mueller’s filing said.
In Mueller’s indictment against Manafort and Gates earlier this fall, he said that they “repeatedly provided false information to financial bookkeepers, tax accountants, and legal counsel, among others.”
Read the full filing below:
I’m fairly certain there’s a logical and reasonable explanation for all 400,000 items.
The underlying message: I have 400,000 pieces of evidence against you, asshole.
I suppose if you had a single email that appears on several devices, thus proving who read it, you would have to document each one separately.
One, Mueller must have an army of gophers just to gather and copy the data together.
Two, was it organized in some form, or did someone trip on the way over with the boxes?
Three, if electronic, did they stay with 8.3 conventions for file naming including alpha and numeric naming?
Four, Someone is going to have to hire a whole bunch of paralegals now.
That appears to be something of an avalanche.