PEORIA — What court documents call a "fairly junior" employee in former U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock's Peoria office was an informant for months and appears to have provided the information that led to federal prosecutors indicting the Peoria Republican.

But according to documents filed late Tuesday by Schock's team of attorneys, the employee, Schock's office manager, wasn't interviewed and didn't consent to be an informant until after Schock had announced his resignation on March 17, 2015. The informant is not named in the documents.

Over the weeks and months, five people — Schock, Karen Haney, Schock’s campaign manager; Dayne LaHood, Schock’s district chief of staff; Shea Ledford, a staffer; and Jonathon Link, Schock’s digital media director — were monitored and their emails and conversations recorded, according to a memo submitted by George J. Terwilliger III, an attorney with the Schock team.

Schock hopes prosecutors will be ordered to hand over instructions given to the grand jury as well as other information about the informant that might be used to combat his indictment for fraud and official misconduct.

It appears Schock's attorneys are attacking the government's case from two prongs: The first attack is through the documents obtained by the informant. Schock's attorneys claim that was done through subterfuge and thus illegal. The second prong is through instructions and questions given to the grand jury investigating the case. Schock's attorneys claim through the testimony of many witnesses that prosecutors misstated the rules and regulations of the U.S. House of Representatives that applied to Schock, and made improper inferences about their client, including that he didn't testify.

Terwilliger and Schock's team argue the informant was misleading and violated the law by recording conversations with fellow staffers despite the fact that all were represented by an attorney. Such statements wouldn't have been obtained during a normal interrogation, and Schock's attorneys allege the informant falsely pretended to be represented by an attorney as well so as to entice the others into talking.

Records such as "receipts for fuel and other items, invoices and summaries of office purchases, and a credit card statement for Mr. Schock’s personal American Express account" were taken from the desk of Dayne Lahood's desk in the Peoria office, according to the memo.

And it appeared that Terwilliger and other attorneys are also angry because they are claiming that as they were wrangling with federal prosecutors over thousands of pages of records that were sought by subpoena, the government had already obtained many of them through the informant.

"It is undisputed that the government did not obtain a warrant to search Mr. Schock’s congressional office in Peoria, Illinois, and seize documents therein. Instead, the government enlisted the CI as a confidential informant and gave him explicit directions to remove documents from Mr. Schock’s congressional office to be turned over to them," the document alleges.

Schock, 35, was indicted in November on charges of wire fraud, mail fraud, making false statements, filing a false tax return, theft of government funds and falsification of Federal Election Commission filings. The charges allege a course of conduct that began when Schock was first elected to Congress in 2008 and continued until October 2015, about six months after he resigned from office. It's alleged that he stole more than $100,000 from the government and his campaign committees. At his arraignment last month, his attorneys told a federal judge there was about $400,000 left in those bank accounts.

Andy Kravetz is the Journal Star public safety reporter. He can be reached at 686-3283 and akravetz@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @andykravetz.