Prosecutors in the Russia probe have obtained hundreds of thousands of documents and gotten a host of information from laptops and phones in the ongoing investigation into former Trump campaign advisers Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.
So far, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators have collected 400,000 documents including financial records, corporate records and emails involving the defendants.
They also have the information from 36 laptops, phones, thumb drives and other electronic devices that were seized during the raid of Manafort’s house. The investigators have gotten 15 search warrants in the investigation, according to a new court filing Friday.
That collection of documents breaks down into several different pots of information, according to the filing: foreign bank account records, 116,000 pages of US financial records, 89,000 records on one hard drive, 120,000 records on two other hard drives, and 80,000 records on a fourth hard drive. The federal prosecutors also noted they have documents from Manafort’s tax preparer “that were identified by the government as particularly relevant.”
So far, the government lawyers have identified 2,000 documents as “hot,” the filing said on Friday.
Prosecutors also say the defendants have testified in another investigation.
In a separate filing on Friday, prosecutors revealed a few of the documents they’ve collected, such as an email exchange between Manafort and Gates in August and September 2016 that outline their strategy to dispel political attacks against them, according to court documents unsealed Friday.
The documents about the narrative Manafort and Gates wanted to advance are part of a larger argument the special counsel office is making to the court about Manafort’s bail and trustworthiness.
Manafort and Gates are scheduled to appear in court Monday morning. Both have pleaded not guilty to their money laundering and foreign lobbying federal criminal charges.
