Manafort under surveillance before and after election: report
President Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort was under surveillance both before and after the 2016 election and told by prosecutors that he will be indicted, according to reports.
The FBI began investigating the longtime Republican operative in 2014 because of his work with the pro-Kremlin party in Ukraine and received a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to monitor him, CNN reported Monday.
That warrant was discontinued but investigators received another one that extended into the beginning of this year after intercepted communications with suspected Russian operatives, the outlet said.
Mueller's agents raided his home in Alexandria, Va., in July, with the New York Times reporting Monday that prosecutors told him soon after that he would be indicted.
The future raid target stepped down from Trump’s campaign last August after reports of under the table payments when he worked in Ukraine for the Party of the Regions, whose president Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia amid violent protests in Kiev.
Manafort is the second Trump associate to reportedly have been under a FISA warrant, with reports earlier this year that foreign policy adviser and former Moscow financier Carter Page was also being monitored.
Government applications for FISA warrants require information suggesting that the target of the surveillance may be acting as an agent of a foreign power.
The vast majority of requests by the government are granted, though the courts and warrants they issue are secret.
Mueller also would have had to show probable cause for a crime to raid Manafort's home, though it is unclear what if any charges Manafort could face in a potential indictment.
Questions have previously been raised about the loan he received for a house in the Hamptons after leaving the Trump campaign, as well as his failure to register as a foreign agent during his work for the Ukrainian government.
Manafort, who belatedly registered as a foreign agent earlier this summer, has denied any wrongdoing or collusion with the Russian government.
He was part of the now infamous June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump's son, son-in-law Jared Kushner and a Kremlin-connected lawyer who claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton procured by Russia's top prosecutor.
CNN reported that Manafort was not under FISA surveillance at the time of the meeting, and that it was unclear when the second warrant took effect.
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