Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled against Paul Manafort in DC federal court Thursday, deciding evidence collected in a locked storage facility opened for law enforcement by a Manafort employee was obtained legally and can be used in trial.
From the opinion and order:
Law enforcement agents do not need a warrant to enter a location if they have voluntary consent, and they do not need to have the consent of the person under investigation if they receive permission from a third party who has, or who reasonably appears to have, common authority over the place to be searched. Here, the agents obtained a copy of the lease for the storage unit. The person identified as the lessee or “occupant” of the storage unit was an employee of a company owned by Manafort who had a key to the premises, and he unlocked the door for the agents and gave them written permission to enter. Therefore, the preliminary inspection of the unit falls within the consent exception to the warrant requirement.
Furthermore, the agents did obtain a search warrant in compliance with the Fourth Amendment for the containers within the storage unit before they opened any of the boxes or drawers or examined the records inside. A review of the warrant affidavit reveals that even if the initial survey of the unit was unlawful, that finding would not invalidate the seizure of the records that was carried out in accordance with the warrant. The affidavit in support of the warrant application set out the agent’s reasons to believe that Manafort had been engaged in criminal activity in the conduct of his business, and that his business records had been moved to, and remained in, the locker rented for that purpose. So, if one were to excise the challenged information from the application, and presume that the Magistrate Judge was presented with a warrant application that did not include the few paragraphs describing the contents of the storage unit and the labels on the boxes, the affidavit would still support a finding of probable cause to believe that a crime or crimes had been committed and that records related to those crimes were likely to be found in the unit.
Finally, the warrant was not overbroad since it called for records related to specific offenses detailed in the application and in the warrant itself. And even if this Court were to conclude that the warrant could or should be have been more tightly drawn, the agents relied in good faith on a warrant that had been reviewed and signed by a United States Magistrate Judge, and therefore, the evidence seized during the execution of the warrant should not, and will not, be excluded.
In a hearing last month, Manafort’s lawyers told Jackson his rights against unreasonable searches and seizures under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment were violated in 2017 when the FBI searched the storage locker and also conducted a raid on his home in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia.
In the argument related to the storage locker, Manafort’s lawyers accused the FBI of conducting an illegal warrantless search in May 2017 on the unit by getting one of Manafort’s low-level employees to unlock it and let an agent look inside.
The employee who unlocked it was listed on the lease for the unit and the agent then obtained a warrant to seize business records stored there.
(...)
Jackson has yet to rule on a motion by Manafort to suppress certain evidence seized in his home.
USA v Manafort - Order on Motion to Suppress - 062118 (vis BuzzFeed News)
Judge denies request by ex-Trump campaign aide to suppress evidence (Reuters)