{"id":180007,"date":"2017-08-09T18:17:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-09T23:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/08\/09\/pass-the-popcorn-21\/"},"modified":"2017-08-09T18:17:00","modified_gmt":"2017-08-09T23:17:00","slug":"pass-the-popcorn-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/08\/09\/pass-the-popcorn-21\/","title":{"rendered":"Pass the Popcorn"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>I’ve always felt that the whole Russia hysteria is primarily about those who screwed the pooch in 2016 finding a scapegoat upon which they would attach the blame.<\/p>\n

At best, the underlying criminal act is a violation of campaign finance law, and given the current dysfunctional nature of the Federal Elections Commission mitigates against even that.<\/p>\n

That being said, in this sort of situation, it’s frequently not the crime, it’s the coverup, and when the FBI executes a predawn raid on one of the principals in the matter<\/a>, it’s starting to get really interesting:<\/p>\n

FBI agents raided the home in Alexandria, Va., of President Trump\u2019s former campaign chairman, arriving in the pre-dawn hours late last month and seizing documents and other materials related to the special counsel investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.<\/span>

<\/span> The raid, which occurred without warning on July 26, signaled an aggressive new approach by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team in dealing with a key figure in the Russia inquiry. Manafort has been under increasing pressure as the Mueller team looked into his personal finances and his professional career as a highly paid foreign political consultant.<\/span>

<\/span> Using a search warrant, agents appeared the day Manafort was scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee and a day after he met voluntarily with Senate Intelligence Committee staff members.<\/span>

<\/span> The search warrant requested documents related to tax, banking and other matters. People familiar with the search said agents departed the Manafort residence with a trove of material, including binders prepared ahead of Manafort\u2019s congressional testimony.<\/span>

<\/span> Investigators in the Russia inquiry have previously sought documents with subpoenas, which are less intrusive and confrontational than a search warrant. With a warrant, agents can inspect a physical location and seize any useful information. To get a judge to sign off on a search warrant, prosecutors must show that there is probable cause that a crime has been committed<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This must have rattled their cages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve always felt that the whole Russia hysteria is primarily about those who screwed the pooch in 2016 finding a scapegoat upon which they would attach the blame. At best, the underlying criminal act is a violation of campaign finance law, and given the current dysfunctional nature of the Federal Elections Commission mitigates against even …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[513,407,556,374,486],"class_list":["post-180007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-campaign-finance","tag-justice","tag-laws","tag-politics","tag-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180007"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}