The special counsel has won some early court victories in the Russia investigation, but with charges filed defense attorneys and others are lining up to rein in the probe.
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Kevin Downing, Manafort’s lead attorney, submitted a document Friday indicating that he anticipates filing pre-trial motions that question “the legal basis for and sufficiency of the charges, the suppression of evidence improperly obtained by search warrant, subpoena or otherwise.” Downing also said he may try to prevent Mueller’s prosecutors from presenting some of their evidence during the criminal trial.
Mueller’s team responded to the court Friday with a brief note saying they would need three weeks to present their case, side stepping what will be an intense round of legal jockeying and attempts to undermine the way the special counsel has conducted its investigation.
“’Distort, detract, deny’ is a common playbook for defense lawyers,” said Julie Myers Wood, a former Whitewater prosecutor. “And if the allegations are serious here, I wouldn’t expect the lawyers to sit back or withhold any tool in a quest to undermine the perception of Mueller’s legitimacy.”
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Trump himself told the New York Times in July that he would consider it “a violation” if Mueller’s investigators looked into his personal finances. And the president’s personal attorney, Jay Sekulow, told POLITICO on Thursday he is primed to lodge formal objections with either Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein if the Russia investigation took a wide or unexpected detour into issues like an old Trump real-estate deal.
“We’d view that as outside the scope of legitimate inquiry,” Sekulow said. “We’d raise it.”
Robert Ray, who succeeded Starr as the Clinton independent counsel, said Mueller is on solid ground fighting off most jurisdictional challenges because his office is technically a part of the Justice Department. But Ray still expects defense attorneys to give these questions a go.
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Attorneys for Manafort and Gates have signaled they intend to fight hard against the criminal charges in a case that U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has proposed should go to trial starting May 7. Wary of the intense media coverage the Russia investigation has already generated, Jackson also told the attorneys for Mueller and the defense that she’s considering issue a gag order that limits the public statements both sides may make about the case.
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Trump attorney threatens formal challenges to Mueller/DOJ if Russia probe gets into old real-estate deals. https://t.co/cZ1RyyNE0L @politico
— Darren Samuelsohn (@dsamuelsohn) November 4, 2017
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