right. so it does appear as though obviously there are connections here. there are two separate investigations. one is a previous investigation related to mr. manafort s contacts and work on behalf of the ukrainian government. that warrant was concluded for lack of evidence after a period of time. then there s some gap and then the warrant was restarted in relation to investigation between the trump campaign and contacts with russian officials. so it does sound like there are two investigations, but obviously paul manafort s connections to either russian officials or ukrainian officials sympathetic to russian interests are sort of our connective tie here. laura, there s also new york times reporting that federal investigators picked manafort s locks on an early morning raid. then followed the house search with a warrant. his prosecutors told mr. manafort they planned to indict him said two people close to the investigation. what do you make of that? well, it s likely that the peo
that investigation centered on work done by a group of washington consulting firms for ukraine s former ruling party. our sources say that surveillance was discontinued at some point last year for lack of evidence, according to one of the sources, and then the fbi restarted the surveillance after obtaining a new fisa warrant that extended at least into early this year, now, the second warrant, don, was part of the fbi s efforts to investigate ties between trump campaign associates and suspected russian operatives. it s unclear when that new warrant started, but we have learned that as part of the warrant, earlier this year the fbi conducted a search of a storage facility belonging to paul manafort. of course, that s in addition to that raid last july at his home when the fbi executed that no knock warrant, don. do we know whether president trump, the president himself spoke to manafort while he was under surveillance? so it s actually pretty interesting because we ve told by source
if there was, what does that mean? in addition to president trump, who else was paul manafort speaking to. i m sure there s a lot of people out there tonight wondering if they re caught on those tapes. absolutely. the fbi restarted surveillance after getting a new feesa warrant. getting one is not easy to do. what does that tell you at the investigation. at the outs it means the government was able to prove to a judge that they had probable cause that paul manafort was the agent of a foreign power. the definition can encompass a lot of different activities, but typically it does indicate there s some evidence here of there being criminal wrongdoing. so considering the surveillance was discontinued at some point last year for lack of evidence, it means when they got the fisa warrant again, they must have learned something new, right, something that would that rises to that level that you just started.
orders, surveillance that continued until this year when manafort was still talking to the president. they also raided a storage facility of his. what are the implications of all of this? well, it certainly is a very aggressive investigation, much more so than is the norm for special prosecutors, certainly historically. they must see something because to get a warrant, which they ve done on three occasions with manafort, they have to show probable cause that there is not only is he a foreign agent, but there s likely an he is pga auj or similar crime. so this was a pretty high standard. so that s why i say, you know, they have some evidence and they re being very aggressive in going after it and they re not hiding that fact at all. just a short while ago the new york times reported some of the aggressive tactics special counsel robert mueller is using in his investigation. here is a part of what they said about the raid on manafort s home in july.