It perhaps is a minor thing, five cell phones, but the Mueller investigation is moving methodically and more interestingly has some fascinating possibilities, since it might not be about Manafort’s Ukraine connections. Ultimately it will still be about money, even under the “wider mandate”, but since it’s not about Ukraine, what will be notable will be the time periods and of course the contacts for these corroborating phones.
In a new court filing on Thursday, the special counsel’s office revealed additional details of the probe that indicate he has recently expanded his investigation of Paul Manafort. The further implication of this filing is that Mueller is actively building a collusion case against the former Trump campaign chairman or other Trump campaign officials, and potentially basing it on the testimony of former Manafort deputy Rick Gates.
The new details show that Mueller’s team acquired search warrants on five telephone numbers last month, just two weeks after Gates began to officially cooperate in Mueller’s probe.
[...]
As Mueller laid out in another response to Manafort’s attorneys earlier this week, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein last August gave him authority to investigate Manafort on at least two fronts.
- First was whether Manafort “[c]ommitted a crime or crimes by colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election for President of the United States.”
- Second was, whether he “[c]ommitted a crime or crimes arising out of payments he received from the Ukrainian government before and during the tenure of President Viktor Yanukovych.”
By process of elimination, they are related to either a potential collusion case against Manafort, or additional targets. If there are additional targets, though, they would have to be connected in some way to Mueller’s wider mandate to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and/or the Trump campaign’s potential cooperation with that interference and links to Russia.
[...]
Legal analyst Renato Mariotti observed on Twitter that this new warrant could very well mean that Mueller is seeking “historical cell site information” for Manafort’s old phones, which would mean he’s trying to track the timing of Manafort’s previous movements. Again, this all came soon after Gates began cooperating with the investigation.
slate.com/...
1/ As
@bradheath of
@USATODAY noted in the tweet quoted above, today Mueller disclosed the existence of a number of search warrants tonight in its ongoing investigation of Manafort (and others), including a search warrant for information relating to five AT&T phones.
2/ The search warrant itself is still sealed, so right now all we know is that the search warrant was obtained. Nonetheless, the fact that Mueller obtained the search warrant tells us a number of things about his investigation.
3/ Mueller would not need a search warrant to obtain subscriber data or records of the calls made to and from the phones. He would also not need a search warrant to obtain billing information for the phones. He could obtain all of that information using a subpoena.
4/ This warrant likely means that Mueller obtained what is called "historical cell site information" for those five phones. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering whether a search warrant is needed to obtain historical cell site information, so obtaining one makes sense.
5/ Historical cell site information is a list of the cell towers that a particular cell phone communicated with when a call was made. For the vast majority of cell towers, it also indicates which side of the cell tower the phone was communicating with.
6/ This information can be used by law enforcement to obtain a rough sense of where the phone was located at a particular time. For example, if my phone connected to a cell tower in downtown Chicago at 7pm, it indicates that I was somewhere in that vicinity at that time.
7/ Historical cell site information does not tell you the location of a phone in between phone calls, and it doesn't tell you where the phone was located in the future. But it can be very important evidence whenever the location of a person is important in proving a crime.
8/ For example, I used historical cell site information as evidence to prove the guilt of the Bogdanov family when they traveled around the country stealing millions of dollars in merchandise from retail stores. Mr. Bogdanov's phone always seemed to be located near the thefts.
9/ Historical cell site information is less useful in most white collar cases. For example, if I'm trying to prove that an executive laundered money, all the phone location information would show me is that he is at his office. What matters is not where he's located.
10/ That's why this move by Mueller is interesting. It indicates that it's important to Mueller to know where the owners of the phones were located at particular times. For example, the location information could be used to show that the phones were in the same place at one time.
11/ We don't know who the five phones belong to. They could belong to Manafort and Gates. But the fact that Mueller obtained this information is that he's interested in the whereabouts of the owners of these phones at particular times.
12/ It suggests that the location of the people Mueller is investigating matters to him. That could be due to trips overseas or because individuals meeting each other will back up the testimony of one of his cooperators. But it certainly offers a window in what he's doing, /end