Mueller Turns Up The Heat With Unusual Search Warrant In Russia Probe

Special counsel Robert Mueller (left) arrives at the U.S. Capitol for a closed meeting with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 21.

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Special counsel Robert Mueller (left) arrives at the U.S. Capitol for a closed meeting with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 21.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Federal prosecutors have lots of ways to intensify pressure on the people they’re investigating, from early morning FBI raids to leaning on relatives of those under government scrutiny.

But even by those measures, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in last year’s presidential election is moving with unusual speed and assertiveness, according to half a dozen legal experts following the probe.

Consider disclosures that FBI agents executed a search warrant last month for business and tax records at the suburban Virginia home of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. That step would have required them to prove to a judge that there’s probable cause a crime has been committed.

Ken Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel frequently criticized for alleged overreach by then-President Bill Clinton, never utilized search warrants, two members of the team told NPR. Neither did the special counsel investigating the leak of a CIA operative’s identity in the George W. Bush administration, said William Jeffress, a Washington attorney who represented White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby in that probe.

“A search warrant in a case like this is highly unusual,” Jeffress said.

Lawyers said the special counsel may have been motivated to use a search warrant over concerns that evidence might be concealed or destroyed, which sometimes happens in terrorism and drug trafficking cases. Or, they said, Mueller may have been moving quickly amid a series of existential threats. In recent weeks, President Trump has blasted the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt” and flirted with the idea of firing Justice Department leaders as a roundabout way to get rid of Mueller himself.

Talking with reporters Thursday, the president said he was “very surprised” by the FBI raid at Manafort’s home and said it sent a “strong signal.” Trump also said that the White House is cooperating with the special counsel probe even though, he said, the subjects under investigation never happened.

In any case, the Justice Department frequently deploys tough tactics with a larger goal in mind: securing the cooperation of insiders who can guide authorities through a complex investigation and help deliver bigger targets.

“I call it ‘climbing the ladder,’” Jeffress said. “It happens in every corporate investigation,” where investigators question clerks and assistants, and then move up to vice presidents and higher-level executives.

A spokesman for Manafort, Jason Maloni, said he is responding to government inquiries.

Whether Manafort, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn or anyone else decides to strike a deal with the government is being closely watched by people in and outside the probe.

Authorities routinely enlist relatives to try to turn up the heat. Recent media reports suggested that investigators have reached out to Manafort’s son-in-law, with whom he’d entered into some real estate dealings.

Indeed, several members of Mueller’s 16-lawyer special counsel team have a long history of approaching lower-level figures, including spouses and in-laws, to build bigger cases.

Take Andrew Weissmann, a special counsel lawyer who once led the Justice Department’s Enron Task Force. Prosecutors looking to uncover and punish fraud at that defunct energy company famously threatened to charge the wife of the company’s chief financial officer with tax offenses if he did not agree to plead guilty and testify against his corporate superiors. The finance official, Andrew Fastow, refused. So, authorities indicted his wife, Lea. They both served prison time.

A more recent addition to the special counsel team, Greg Andres, helped bring to justice the Bonanno crime family boss as a young mob prosecutor in Brooklyn. Through the course of the trial, Andres helped unravel dozens of crimes over three decades, using federal agents and members of the crime family as narrators. One of his key witnesses was the brother-in-law of the defendant, Joseph Massino.

“The story principally was told from the vantage point of those involved in the crimes at issue and their credibility was a crucial issue,” Andres told the publication Law360 last year.

Andres so got under the skin of the mobsters that one later testified he had been targeted for a “hit.”

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Greg Olsen says narrative that Cam Newton isn’t a leader is ‘exhausting’

A month out from this 11th NFL season, Panthers TE Greg Olsen spoke with For the Win on a variety of topics, including his contract, the false perceptions of Cam Newton and Jay Cutler, Carolina rookie Christian McCaffrey and his time shooting this hilarious bit with Ben Schwartz, of Parks and Rec and House of Lies fame, for the web series Courtyard Camera.

You were excellent in this bit with Ben Schwartz, and you made an appearance on Inside Amy Schumer  last year. Have you considering getting into acting once your playing career is over?

No. I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s in the cards. I don’t know if I have what it takes to do that.

How much fun did you have shooting that?

Oh it was awesome. Ben was awesome to work with. He’s really funny, really clever and witty. I think we spent more time laughing, having to re-cut stuff because none of us could hold it together long enough. He had us cracking up the entire time. It was a fun shoot, that’s for sure.

Going into Year 11, are you thinking about post-football life at this point?

I’m kind of going with the flow. All of us — especially at this point in our career — you think about what’s next and what’s down the road. But I’m still enjoying playing. I still feel good. I still feel like I can play at a high level. As long as that’s the case, I’m just going to continue to play and continue to try to have good seasons. So, when that time comes to call it a career and move on, hopefully there’s some opportunities to keep myself involved in the game.

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You were hoping to get a new contract this offseason, and there were even reports of you possibly holding out. Was that actually something you were considering doing or just overreaction to the contract talk?

When we were asked about [holding out], it was never something we brought up or something we put out there. But when we were asked about the contract, we gave our honest opinion. It was something we were going to work through with the team, and hopefully something we could come to an agreement on. We were pretty confident in our stance. We were also very clear that at no point did our relationship with the team or the negotiations with [former GM] Dave Gettleman turn sour. Guys every year across the league look for new contracts. That’s just the business in the NFL. I don’t think our situation here was any different.

Last year was tough for you guys coming off the Super Bowl loss. Can you feel a difference in the mentality of the team heading into this season?

I think guys are ready this year. Guys are ready to put that behind us. Guys are ready to move forward and get last year out of the way and right that wrong, so to speak. We were disappointed with the way things went last year, when we let ourselves down. I think we’re eager for a new start. We’re eager now for a new season to play football we’re more accustomed to playing. That’s what we’re prepping for right now in camp. Hopefully in four weeks the product we roll out for our first game in San Francisco reflects that.

A lot is made of the dreaded Super Bowl hangover. Is it a legit thing and, if so, how did it affect the Panthers in 2016?

To a degree. Last offseason, there was a lot of new territory for a lot of the guys. We had some roster turnover. We opened the season with a tough loss, again to Denver. So we really never got from under that cloud. It was just kind of one of those years, where every time we thought we grabbed some momentum and kind of found our groove, something else broke it. A lot of it was self-inflicted. In this league, you control your own fate, so we have to do a better job of handling our season and handling our preparation and getting ready for the year.

The team drafted two guys in Christian McCaffrey and Curtis Samuel who add an element the offense has lacked for a while now. Everyone just assumes you guys will dial back the deep throws you’ve been known for and work in shorter throws. Are you seeing major changes to the playbook or should we expect more of the same in 2017?

I think it’s going to be a combination. Every year, you try to evolve a little bit. You try to introduce new elements to your offense. But we’re also going to be who we are. Two years ago, we had the MVP quarterback and led the league in scoring. We’re not going to completely abandon what we feel we do well. But we’re also not going to ignore things we can do to improve. That’s what every team around the league aims for, and I don’t think we’re any different.

VIDEO: Going to be impossible for even the most athletic linebackers in the league to stay with Christian McCaffrey.

Matchup nightmare! pic.twitter.com/TcR3WwmH22

— PirateLife Football (@PirateLifeFF) July 31, 2017

Speaking of McCaffrey, we’ve seen a bunch of clips of him making guys look silly in practice. What have you seen from him early on?

I think the physical stuff with him, we all expected that. We all watched him play enough in college, his highlights, to know that he was pretty special with the ball in his hands. Just his approach, his demeanor for a young kid. Coming in as a rookie, 21 years old. He has a different look in his eye than some of the other rookies. It’s pretty clear that he knows he belongs. He’s been around this game for a long time growing up with his dad [former Broncos receiver Ed McCaffrey]. He’s a little bit different from the traditional rookie, and he’s a guy who’s caught everyone’s attention from early on.

Cam Newton seems to be under constant scrutiny. Just last month former NFL player Booger McFarland said he’s heard from people in Charlotte that Cam isn’t a leader in the locker room. You’ve played with Cam his entire career. How is he as a teammate and a leader in the locker room?

This has been a storyline that has been circulating since he’s come into the league. It’s really become an exhausting storyline. Guys enjoy saying it on the national level because it’s a hot take. Something that garners a lot of headlines and reaction. But there’s not a lot of substance behind it. I don’t even know if it deserves attention at all. For what Cam has accomplished, where we’ve come as an organization since we drafted him, I think all that speaks for itself. For what he’s done for this organization, putting it on the map nationally, it’s exhausting hearing this narrative circulated year in and year out. Around the locker room, it’s a storyline that’s not even given much credibility.

Cam gets a lot of credit for the big runs and ‘wow’ throws, but what is one aspect of his game that is underappreciated?

I don’t think people really realize just how much he understands the game and how well he sees the field. He does things innately that don’t necessarily come naturally to all quarterbacks. He sees things. He feels things. He just has a sense of the bigger picture on the field. You see it on tape and say “I don’t know how he saw it, but he knew something was going to come open.” Some guys just have that natural instinct, and his instincts are really good.

(Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

From the outside looking in, it looks like he does a lot of work before the snap, a la Peyton Manning. Is that the case and, if so, why doesn’t he get more credit for doing so?

We do a lot of stuff before the snap. A lot of two-play checks. A lot of kills at the line of scrimmage. Our no-huddle offense has been very successful and a lot of that falls on him making the calls. I don’t know why he doesn’t get more credit. Obviously we could speculate, but it’s just not something he’s overly worried about. It’s not something we’re overly worried about. We know what he brings to the table and what he does for this team.

You also played two seasons with Jay Cutler, who is maybe the only quarterback more scrutinized than Cam. There’s always talk about his leadership abilities. How was Cutler as a teammate and what do you think about this notion that he doesn’t care?

My two years playing with Jay, I enjoyed them. Obviously, he’s got great talent. He’s got a great will to win — a great competitive spirit. I think the thing people don’t like about Jay is they’re used to people bending and accommodating other people. Everybody in today’s day and age is so worried about everyone else’s feelings. Jay’s just going to live his life. And I think guys on the team respect that, and they get it. He’s not worried about winning every press conference. He’s worried about playing quarterback, playing football and competing. He always got a lot of respect from the guys on the team. I’m anxious to see what he does in Miami.

You do a lot of work in the community and have raised a lot of money with the HEARTest Yard fund, which you and your wife, Kara, started after your son, T.J., was born with a congenital heart defect. You were one of the finalists for the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award last season. What would it mean for you to win the award?

I think it would be a tremendous honor. That was a wonderful experience last year just being one of the three finalists. I’d be thrilled again to find myself in that position. Obviously last year we came up a little short to Eli [Manning] and Larry [Fitzgerald], but the experience for not only myself and my family, but also the families we serve through our program at the children’s hospital here in Charlotte, is something that means a great deal to us. To have that national platform was something we didn’t take for granted.

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