US government wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman

[Ubiquitous]

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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Dems & the media want Trump to be more like Obama, but then he'd
have to audit liberals & wire tap reporters' phones.