As I laid out a few weeks ago, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson has finally weighed in whether Paul Manafort gets the eight iPods the government seized from him back. Unsurprisingly, she has ruled that the July 2017 search of Manafort’s Alexandria condo was properly authorized. Better still, she has ordered the parties carry out a discussion that may lead us to learn whether the seven or eight iPods I’ve been obsessing about contain any interesting evidence; she has ordered the government to return any devices that don’t include evidence covered by the warrant by August 17.
ABJ’s order is interesting for two reasons. First, because redacted sections of the order must refer to the June 9 meeting that is described in the warrant but for which the sections of the supporting affidavit are entirely redacted.
One of those sections describes email the government had already obtained that it used to justify its request to obtain electronic devices.
The redacted language almost certainly describes the emails about the June 9 meeting.
We know the government had already obtained emails pertaining to the June 9 meeting because Don Jr had already leaked them for all the world to see by the time of the search. But we also know that Don Jr, at least, was hiding Manafort’s side of the communication (the campaign would have provided Manafort’s side to Mueller’s team when they provided it to Congress).
So while it’s all redacted, one of the things ABJ uses to justify the search and seizure of Manafort’s iPods are almost certainly emails relating to the June 9 meeting, including whatever details noted OpSec wizard Paul Manafort included but which Don Jr recognized retrospectively would be damning.
ABJ goes to the trouble of ruling proper the seizure of the iPods, which might include records pertaining to the crimes in question, specifically.
Deliciously, because Manafort has bitched so much about his iPods, ABJ ordered a status report describing whether any seized devices (but not imaged) fall outside the scope of the warrant.
So we’re going to learn by August 17 (if things don’t come to a head before then) whether Manafort has specific disputes about whether these iPods were used to commit any of the crimes he is suspected of, including conspiring with Russians to steal the election.