Paul Manafort’s defense team insists there were no intercepts of the veteran political consultant communicating with Russian officials. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo TRUMP RUSSIA SCANDAL New scrutiny of potential Manafort links with Russia A Mueller question asks about the former Trump campaign chairman, but his defense says there’s an absence of proof.

Two seemingly conflicting developments involving the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Russia have left legal experts puzzling.

A set of leaked questions for President Donald Trump indicates that special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors are eager to ask the president about efforts Manafort may have made to seek Russian assistance in electing Trump to the White House in 2016.


Manafort’s defense team, however, insisted on Monday that it had been told there were no intercepts of the veteran political consultant communicating with Russian officials.

“Those two facts don’t sit comfortably together,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a fellow with the R Street Institute think tank and a former legal adviser to the Whitewater independent counsel, Ken Starr. “The question for the president presumes an act not yet in evidence: communication between Manafort and Russia. It strongly suggests Mueller has some reason to think such conversations occurred.”

That tension raised doubts about whether Mueller is sitting on bombshell evidence of Manafort’s collusion with Russia — or is still fishing for proof that investigators haven’t managed to dredge up in more than a year of sleuthing.

Rosenzweig doubts Mueller is bluffing. “He asks questions with some predication,” the attorney said.

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Other lawyers were less sure.

“Obviously, they wouldn’t have thrown [Manafort’s] name in there for no reason,” said Jennifer Rodgers, a former federal prosecutor now with an anti-corruption program at Columbia Law School. “They’re probably just saying, ‘We want you to think really hard about this and see if there’s anything you remember.’”

In a filing on Monday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, Manafort’s defense team said it had repeatedly asked prosecutors to turn over records of intercepted communications between Manafort and Russian agents but that prosecutors said they had nothing like that.

“Despite multiple discovery … requests in this regard,” Manafort attorneys Kevin Downing and Thomas Zehnle wrote, “the Special Counsel has not produced any materials to the defense — no tapes, notes, transcripts or other material evidencing surveillance or intercepts of communications between Mr. Manafort and Russian intelligence officials, Russian government officials (or any other foreign officials.) The Office of Special Counsel has advised there are no materials responsive to Mr. Manafort’s requests.”

While the defense lawyers' statement initially appears to convey a startling lack of evidence, legal experts say several nuances could explain the seeming discrepancy.

One possibility is that the lack of records of surveillance or intercepted communications doesn’t mean Mueller lacks all evidence of Manafort’s communicating with Russian officials, just that it’s not surveillance or intercepts. It could be testimony, say, from someone like Rick Gates, a former Manafort aide and co-defendant who pleaded guilty in February and is now cooperating with prosecutors.

“Obviously, they have Gates, so they’ll have some information about what Manafort was doing in that period,” Rodgers said.

Another possibility is that prosecutors have records that just don’t fall into the category of surveillance or intercepts.

“It could be the term of art: interception,” noted Berkeley Research Group’s Jeff Cramer, another former prosecutor. “They could have documents. They could have emails. That’s not an intercept.”

Indeed, in one of the two federal criminal cases against Manafort, prosecutors have already made public emails that Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik exchanged last year about an op-ed set for publication in a Ukrainian news outlet. Prosecutors said at the time that the FBI believed that Kilimnik, a Russian-Ukrainian who advised Manafort on much of his Ukraine work, had ties to Russian intelligence.

A spokesman for Manafort also acknowledged last year that U.S. investigators had access to emails between Manafort and Kilimnik discussing the possibility of conducting “private briefings” on the campaign for Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who was a business partner of Manafort’s.

A Manafort spokesman, Jason Maloni, called the proposal “innocuous.” A spokesperson for Deripaska said it was never relayed to him and that no such briefings ever took place.

Still, the episodes suggest that Mueller’s team has access to some records showing contacts between Manafort and individuals who U.S. officials believe have ties to the Russian government, although they may not technically qualify as Russian government officials. Manafort’s pleading on Monday indicated that the no-records response from prosecutors was limited to Russian officials or other foreign officials.

Maloni declined to comment on Tuesday. Mueller’s office also had no comment.

Rosenzweig said the “no records” response from Mueller’s team could come down to the specific question Manafort’s lawyers asked. They did not attach copies of the correspondence to their motion filed Monday night.

“It could be a case of Manafort’s people asking the wrong question, or telling you the answer they want to tell you the answer to,” Rosenzweig said.

Attorneys said prosecutors almost certainly had an obligation to turn over any recordings of Manafort, even without a request and even if they had only a tangential connection to the pending criminal cases: an indictment in Washington on charges of money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent, and another indictment in Virginia on charges of tax fraud, bank fraud and failing to report foreign bank accounts.

“The government would be required to produce any recording they have of Manafort’s voice,” said Ed MacMahon, a Virginia-based defense attorney.

If those conversations were intercepted through classified means, like a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant or National Security Agency snooping abroad, special court procedures would typically be invoked. There’s been no sign of such hearings or paperwork in either the D.C. or Virginia cases. That has surprised some attorneys, particularly since the D.C. case involves details of Manafort’s work for Ukraine, a topic of high interest to U.S. intelligence agencies in recent years.

If Mueller’s question mentioning Manafort does signal that prosecutors have new information on the subject from Gates, Manafort’s lawyers could be getting that soon. Prosecutors aren’t immediately obligated to turn over everything Gates has said, but they will have to cough up most of it soon if they intend to call him at Manafort’s first trial, which is currently set to begin on July 10.

Manafort’s lawyers would be entitled to all inconsistent statements from Gates, which could be virtually all his statements since he denied any wrongdoing prior to his February plea to charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and lying to investigators. Manafort’s defense is also entitled to anything that Gates admitted involvement in that would amount to a crime, since such admissions could be considered damaging to his credibility.

“It could all be impeachment [evidence] because it’s all crimes,” said Rodgers, the former federal prosecutor. “They have a lot of evidence that hasn’t been made public.”

