IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA
Alexandria Division
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
v.
PAUL J. MANAFORT, JR.,
Defendant.

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Criminal No. 1:18-cr-00083-TSE
Judge T. S. Ellis, III
ORAL ARGUMENT REQUESTED
May 25, 2018 @ 9:00 a.m.

MEMORANDUM OF LAW IN SUPPORT OF DEFENDANT PAUL J. MANAFORT,
JR.’S MOTION TO SUPPRESS EVIDENCE AND ALL FRUITS THEREOF RELATING
TO THE GOVERNMENT’S SEARCH OF THE STORAGE UNIT LOCATED IN
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
Defendant Paul J. Manafort, Jr., by and through counsel, hereby moves the Court pursuant
to Rules 12(b)(3)(C) and 41(h) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to suppress evidence
and all fruits thereof obtained by the government pursuant to a search warrant issued on May 27,
2017, for the storage unit located in Alexandria, Virginia (the “Search Warrant,” attached hereto
as Exhibit A)1 because: (1) the warrantless initial search of the storage unit for information that
the FBI then used to obtain the Search Warrant violated the Fourth Amendment; (2) the Search

                                                            
1
The Special Counsel has provided discovery in this matter, including access to search warrants and
supporting affidavits, jointly with discovery provided in Criminal No. 17-201-1 (ABJ) pending in the U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia (“the D.C. Case”). As the Court is aware, discovery in the D.C.
Case has been produced under a protective order that protects discovery materials from
dissemination. Accordingly, in order to provide this Court with access to the documents referenced in this
motion, while not running afoul of the protective order in the D.C. Case, defendant is attaching redacted
versions of the search warrant, the search warrant affidavit, and a lease agreement to this motion that are
identical to the versions filed in connection with a similar motion to suppress in the D.C. Case. Because
the relevant search warrant was issued by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District Virginia, defendant
presumes that the Court has access to an unredacted copy of the warrant and affidavit in support. If this is
not the case, defendant will seek leave of Court to file a copy of the warrant and affidavit as produced by
the Special Counsel into the record in this proceeding under seal.

 Warrant itself was unconstitutionally overbroad and allowed federal agents to seize property
contained within the storage unit in violation of Mr. Manafort’s Fourth Amendment rights; and (3)
the agents who executed the search exceeded the warrant’s search parameters in violation of the
Fourth Amendment.2 Accordingly, the evidence obtained from the government’s search of the
storage unit should be suppressed. Moreover, because other search warrants later obtained by the
government incorporated the fruits of the illegal search of the storage unit, all evidence obtained
from those warrants must also be suppressed.3
I.

FACTS
On May 27, 2017, the FBI executed the Search Warrant for the storage unit and seized nine

categories of documents and binders. It was not, however, the first time that the FBI had searched
the storage unit. The day before, May 26, 2017, an FBI Special Agent (the “FBI Agent”)
conducted a warrantless search of the storage unit after obtaining “consent” from a former lowlevel employee of Davis Manafort Partners, Inc. (“DMP”). During the time that he was employed
by DMP, the employee’s responsibilities involved carrying out low-level administrative functions
on behalf of that company at the sole direction of Mr. Manafort. The employee had no actual

                                                            
2
The warrant is also invalid because the FBI agents who sought and executed the warrant acted pursuant
to Acting Attorney General Rosenstein’s invalid grant of authority to the Special Counsel, as set forth in
his Motion to Dismiss (Dkt. No. 30). As the Supreme Court has recognized,
where the officer’s powers are limited by statute, his actions beyond those limitations are
considered individual and not sovereign actions. The officer is not doing the business
which the sovereign has empowered him to do or he is doing it in a way which the sovereign
has forbidden. His actions are ultra vires his authority and therefore may be made the object
of specific relief.
Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Commerce Corp., 337 U.S. 682, 689 (1949).
3

For example, the search warrant affidavit submitted with the government’s application for a warrant to
search Mr. Manafort’s residence incorporated evidence obtained from the FBI Agent’s warrantless initial
search of the storage unit.
 
2
 

 authority to allow the FBI Agent into the premises, as an experienced law enforcement officer
must have known. The FBI Agent clearly recognized this deficiency, because he did not open any
of the containers stored within the premises at that time. Instead, the FBI Agent entered and
observed a number of boxes and a filing cabinet inside the premises, as well as some writing on
the sides of some boxes. He then left the storage facility. The next day, the FBI Agent prepared
and signed an Affidavit in Support of an Application for a Search Warrant (the “FBI Affidavit,”
attached hereto as Exhibit B). In his affidavit, the FBI Agent used the information he had obtained
during his warrantless search to argue in support of probable cause for a warrant to search the
storage unit and seize documents from it. When the magistrate judge issued the Search Warrant
the following day, the FBI Agent’s end-run around the Fourth Amendment was complete. The
Search Warrant was executed less than an hour after it was issued, and the FBI seized numerous
records contained within the storage unit.
II.

DISCUSSION

A. The FBI’s warrantless search of the storage unit violated the Fourth Amendment
1. Neither Mr. Manafort nor any other authorized person consented to the
warrantless initial search of the storage unit
As the FBI Affidavit makes plain, the storage unit contained business records belonging to
Mr. Manafort or his business. (See FBI Aff. ¶¶ 28, 30 (describing “office files of Manafort’s
business” and “more recent office files of Manafort’s business”).) Mr. Manafort maintained a
reasonable expectation of privacy in the storage unit, which had been locked (see id. ¶ 30), and the
FBI Agent’s intrusion into the premises prior to obtaining a valid search warrant constituted a
search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. See, e.g., Garcia v. Dykstra, 260 Fed. App’x
887, 897 (6th Cir. 2008). In Garcia, the court determined that law enforcement intrusion into a
locked storage unit constituted a search, reasoning:
3
 

 [a]lthough an individual may not maintain a legitimate expectation
of privacy in the lock on a door on the theory that a lock exposed to
a public hallway is available to testing by anyone, he may
reasonably expect that the contents of a closed, locked storage unit
within a gated storage complex will remain free from public
inspection.
Id. As the Fourth Circuit articulated in United States v. Block, 590 F.2d 535 (4th Cir. 1978):
[c]ommon experience of life, clearly a factor in assessing the
existence and the reasonableness of privacy expectations, surely
teaches all of us that the law’s ‘enclosed spaces’ mankind’s valises,
suitcases, footlockers, strong boxes, etc. are frequently the objects
of his highest privacy expectations[.]
Id. at 541.
Of course, a warrantless search is “presumptively unreasonable.” United States v. Patiutka,
804 F.3d 684, 688 (4th Cir. 2015). “A search conducted without a warrant issued by a judge or
magistrate upon a showing of probable cause is ‘per se unreasonable’ unless it falls within one of
the ‘specifically established and well-delineated exceptions’ to the warrant requirement.” United
States v. Simons, 206 F.3d 392, 399–400 (4th Cir. 2000) (quoting Katz v. United States, 389 U.S.
347, 357 (1967)). Accordingly, unless an exception to the presumptive rule applies, the initial
search conducted by the FBI Agent – prior to seeking judicial authorization to search the storage
unit – was unlawful.
In this case, the sole applicable exception to the rule stated above would be third-party
consent. See generally United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164 (1974); United States v. Buckner,
473 F.3d 551, 554 (4th Cir. 2007). In an effort to use the evidence ultimately seized from the
storage unit against Mr. Manafort at trial – after the FBI Agent had used information gleaned from
his warrantless search to obtain the Search Warrant – the Special Counsel must rebut the
presumption of unreasonableness by arguing that the former employee had legal authority to
permit the FBI Agent to enter the storage unit and that he consented to the search. But the former
4
 

 employee had no such authority, and the FBI Agent’s purported belief that the former employee
could consent to a search was unreasonable.
The Search Warrant was fundamentally flawed from the outset because the FBI Agent
knew when he conducted the warrantless search of the storage unit that he had not obtained valid
consent to do so. The former DMP employee had no authority to consent to a search of DMP’s
property without Mr. Manafort’s direction, and Mr. Manafort was not in fact contacted for
permission to do so. And any reliance by the government on rental company paperwork is
misplaced; this document establishes that when the storage unit was leased, it was on done on
behalf of DMP, with the former employee’s DMP email address clearly identified.4 Because the
initial warrantless search violated the Fourth Amendment and formed the basis for the
government’s subsequent application for a warrant to search that storage unit and seize its contents,
the Search Warrant should have never been issued, and all evidence that the government obtained
from the FBI’s second search of the premises, and the fruits thereof, should be suppressed. See
generally Wong Son v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963); United States v. Najjar, 300 F.3d 466,
477 (4th Cir. 2002).
2. The former employee had no authority to consent to the initial search
a) The former employee did not have common authority
Absent actual authority, only persons with “common authority over … the premises” may
consent to a search of that premises. Matlock, 415 U.S. at 171. Common authority is narrowly
defined as:
mutual use of the property by persons generally having joint access
or control for most purposes, so that it is reasonable to recognize
                                                            
4

A copy of the lease agreement for the storage unit is annexed hereto as Exhibit C.  

5
 

 that any of the co-inhabitants has the right to permit the inspection
in his own right and that the others have assumed the risk that one
of their number might permit the common area to be searched.
Id. at 171 n.7. The burden of establishing common authority with regard to third-party consent to
search property rests with the government. See Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 181-82 (1990).
As the Fourth Circuit has explained,
third person consent, no matter how voluntarily and unambiguously
given, cannot validate a warrantless search when the circumstances
provided no basis for a reasonable belief that shared or exclusive
authority to permit inspection exists in the third person from any
source, nor even more certainly, when the circumstances manifest
to the contrary that the absent target of the search retains an
expectation of privacy in the place or object notwithstanding some
appearance or claim of authority by the third person[.]
Block, 590 F.2d at 540 (internal citations omitted). In Block, the court suppressed the fruits of a
police search of the defendant’s footlocker despite the fact that his mother, with whom he resided,
had consented to the search. Id. at 542. Critically, “‘[c]ommon authority’ in this context is not
merely a question of property interest. Rather, it requires evidence of ‘mutual use’ by one
generally having ‘joint access or control for most purposes.’” Buckner, 473 F.3d at 554 (quoting
Matlock, 415 U.S. at 171 n.7). Mutual use and joint access are both required to validate a search
based on the common authority of a third party consenter. See, e.g., United States v. Whitfield,
939 F.2d 1071, 1074 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (suppressing fruits of search and finding that even if the
government bore its burden of proving joint access, it failed to prove mutual use). Importantly,
third party authority to consent to a search “does not exist where it is uncertain that the property
is in fact subject to mutual use.” United States v. Peyton, 745 F.3d 546, 554 (D.C. Cir. 2014)
(footnote omitted; emphasis added).
Based on his sworn affidavit, the FBI Agent could not have proceeded with a reasonable
belief that the former employee and Mr. Manafort mutually used the storage unit after he learned
6
 

 that he was no longer an employee of DMP. Nothing that the former employee purportedly stated
to the FBI Agent can be construed as an indication that he ever shared use of the storage unit with
Mr. Manafort. Rather, the FBI Affidavit makes it abundantly clear that the storage unit was used
exclusively for the storage of Mr. Manafort’s business records and that it did not contain any
property that belonged to the former employee. Indeed, the FBI Affidavit states that the former
employee described the contents of the premises as the “office files of Manafort’s business” (FBI
Aff. ¶ 28), as well as “additional, more recent office files of Manafort’s business[.]” (FBI Aff. ¶
30.) In fact, the former employee was unable to provide the FBI Agent with a description of the
contents of the filing cabinet stored in the premises but only stated that he would put “brown, legalsized files” into the cabinet at Mr. Manafort’s direction. (Id.) He also explained to the FBI Agent
that the filing cabinet stored inside the premises had come from Mr. Manafort’s former residence.
(Id.) Not once in his affidavit does the FBI Agent identify a single item of property that belonged
to the former employee and that was contained, or might have been contained, within the storage
unit. In short, nothing that the former employee stated to the FBI Agent when he described the
contents of the storage unit could have caused the FBI Agent to reasonably believe that the unit
was a space that Mr. Manafort and the former employee mutually shared. Thus, the FBI Agent
had no legitimate basis to reasonably believe that the former employee had common authority to
consent to the warrantless initial search of the storage unit.
Indeed, the fact that the FBI Agent knew that the former DMP employee had no common
authority to consent to a search of the storage unit is revealed by the steps the FBI Agent took once
he gained initial access to the unit. Rather than conducting a search and seizure based on a belief
that the former DMP employee had actual authority to consent to such a search – which the law
would have clearly permitted in the case of a valid and voluntary consent – the FBI Agent took

7
 

 care not to open any of the boxes or the filing cabinet that he observed inside the unit. (See id. ¶
31.) Instead, the FBI Agent completed his initial search, left the storage facility, returned to his
office, and drafted the search warrant affidavit to establish probable cause using the information
he gathered during the warrantless entry to justify the second search of the premises. Had the FBI
Agent truly believed that the informant had the authority to consent to the initial search, there
would have been no reason for the FBI Agent to apply for a search warrant to allow him to search
the storage unit a second time.
b) The former employee did not have apparent authority
Absent actual common authority, a person with apparent authority may authorize a search,
provided that law enforcement reasonably believes that the person is authorized to do so. See
Buckner, 473 F.3d at 555. However, “[a]pparent authority ends when it is no longer reasonable
for the third party with whom an agent deals to believe that the agent continues to act with actual
authority.” Restatement (Third) of Agency: Termination of Apparent Authority § 3.11(2) (2006).
As the Fourth Circuit has explained “[a]pparent authority results from a principal’s manifestation
of an agent’s authority to a third party, regardless of the actual understanding between the
principal and agent.” Auvil v. Grafton Homes, Inc., 92 F.3d 226, 230 (4th Cir. 1996) (emphasis
added).
Here, Mr. Manafort never expressed anything to the FBI Agent with regard to what the
former DMP employee was authorized to do (or not do) on behalf of DMP, or any other business.
Mr. Manafort and the FBI Agent have never communicated with each other. Moreover, the FBI
Agent stated in his affidavit that he accompanied the former DMP employee to the storage facility
and that, after they arrived, he reviewed a copy of the lease agreement that identified the informant
as the storage unit’s occupant. (See FBI Aff. ¶ 29.) But the FBI Agent also acknowledges that

8
 

 he knew that that the informant was no longer employed by DMP. (See id. ¶ 28 (“your Affiant
met with [him], a former employee of [DMP.]”) (emphasis added).) It was entirely unreasonable
for the FBI Agent to have believed at the time he visited the storage facility that the former DMP
employee had the authority to consent to a search of the storage unit for DMP records. Indeed,
there is nothing in the FBI Affidavit to suggest that the FBI Agent undertook to learn the nature of
the former DMP employee’s new position at Steam Mountain, LLC, or whether the former DMP
employee’s current duties for that entity had any connection to his prior duties for DMP, or even
whether Steam Mountain, LLC itself had any meaningful connection to DMP. Lastly, the FBI
Agent knew that the premises contained Mr. Manafort’s – not the former employee’s – business
records, (see id.), rendering any belief by the FBI Agent that the former employee had authority to
consent to a search of the storage unit unreasonable.
Once the FBI Agent knew that the former employee could not legally enter the storage unit
without Mr. Manafort’s direction and consent, the FBI Agent could not have reasonably believed
that the former employee had apparent authority to do so. This is so because “the facts available
to the officer” at the time of a consent search must “warrant a person of reasonable caution in the
belief that the consenting party had authority[.]” Buckner, 473 F.3d at 555 (citation, internal
quotation marks, and internal brackets omitted). Here, the government cannot carry its burden by
referring to the facts as the FBI Agent understood them unless the agent had sufficient facts at his
disposal to draw a reasonably well-informed judgment as to the third party’s authority to consent.
As the court in Whitfield explained:
[t]he burden cannot be met if agents, faced with an ambiguous
situation, nevertheless proceed without making further inquiry. If
the agents do not learn enough, if the circumstances make it unclear
whether the property about to be searched is subject to mutual use
by the person giving consent, then warrantless entry is unlawful
without further inquiry. . . .
9
 

 Whitfield, 939 F.2d at 1075 (internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis in original). In other
words, if the FBI Agent did not adequately investigate the nature of the third party’s authority,
then he cannot be justified in concluding that the third party had authority.
Again, there cannot be apparent authority for a third party’s consent to a search unless the
searching officer is certain that the premises to be searched is subject to mutual use by the third
party and the target of the search. Peyton, 745 F.3d 554. The “facts available to the officer at the
moment,” Rodriguez, 497 U.S. at 178 (quoting Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 21–22 (1968)), include
facts that the FBI Agent should have uncovered. Here, the facts that the FBI Agent knew amply
demonstrated that the third party acted only “as directed by Manafort” (see FBI Aff. ¶ 28), and
that he entered the storage unit only “at Manafort’s direction” (id. at 30); therefore, the informant
lacked authority to consent, and the FBI Agent had a duty to take reasonable investigative steps to
confirm his authority. This, he did not do before engaging in a warrantless search.
Indeed, the Special Counsel has presented no evidence, whether in the FBI Affidavit or
elsewhere, that the FBI Agent took any steps to investigate the nature of the former DMP
employee’s authority. This would not have required any unusual sleuthing and undercuts any
after-the-fact claim of “good faith” justifying an exception to the exclusionary rule. For example,
an agent who was truly interested in learning whether he could validly solicit consent from the
third party would, at a minimum, have asked the third party whether he was allowed to enter the
storage unit without permission from Mr. Manafort; whether he was authorized to store his own
property in the unit; whether he was authorized to let others into the unit; whether he and Mr.
Manafort had ever discussed the nature of the third party’s authority; why his name and not Mr.
Manafort’s was on the lease; whether his duties changed when he left DMP; among other things.
In Whitfield, the court disapproved of an agent’s failure to ask just such questions:

10
 

 As a factual matter, the agents could not reasonably have believed
Mrs. Whitfield had authority to consent to this search. The agents
simply did not have enough information to make that judgment. . . .
Whether she had “mutual use” of the room or the closet containing
the defendant’s clothing could not be determined from anything the
agents asked . . . . The agents never asked Mrs. Whitfield whether
she cleaned her son’s room, visited with him there, stored any of her
possessions in the room, watched television there, or made use of
the room at any time for any purpose . . . . The agents’ superficial
and cursory questioning of Mrs. Whitfield did not disclose sufficient
information to support a reasonable belief that she had the authority
to permit this search. The agents could not infer such authority
merely from her ownership of the house.
939 F.2d at 1074-75.
In United States v. Corral, 339 F. Supp.2d 781 (W.D. Tex. 2004), the court suppressed
evidence seized from a home where the purported consent to a warrantless search came from a
part-time domestic housekeeper. Id. at 799. Prior to the search, the housekeeper told federal
agents that she was in charge of the homeowner’s child when the homeowner was absent and that
the homeowner allowed her to clean (and thereby access) the entire premises on a regular basis.
Id. at 785-86. The court reasoned that these “minimal facts” had been insufficient to provide a
basis for the agents to reasonably believe that the housekeeper had apparent authority to consent
to a search of the home. Id. at 796. In Boyer v. Peterson, 221 F. Supp.3d 943 (W.D. Mich. 2016),
the court concluded that a spouse did not have apparent authority to consent to a search of a home
despite being a co-owner of the property where the spouse was no longer a co-occupant of the
home, a fact known to the police at the time of the search. Id. at 957. The court noted that the
searching officer’s reliance on the spouse “as the ‘owner’ and ‘deed-holder’ was not sufficient to
conclude that the spouse had ‘actual’ or ‘apparent’ authority over the residence” because “[a] thirdparty’s ‘common authority’ is not synonymous with a technical property interest.” Id. (quoting
Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 110 (2006)). In United States v. Toan Phuong Nghe, 925 F.
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 Supp. 2d 1142 (W.D. Wash. 2013), the court held that it was unreasonable for police officers to
conduct a warrantless search of a hotel room despite the fact that the hotel manager had consented
to the search, because the manager did not have apparent authority to consent to the search even
though he had given the officers a key to the hotel room. Id. at 1147.
In this case, the FBI Agent overstepped the confines of the Fourth Amendment in his
warrantless search, and any reliance by the government on the concept of apparent authority is not
supported based on the agent’s own affidavit. Although the former DMP employee retained a key
to a storage unit that contained DMP’s property and papers, he was no longer a DMP employee
per the FBI Affidavit. Indeed, the mere fact that the former DMP employee still appeared on the
lease agreement did not confer on him the apparent authority to consent to a search of the unit
when the FBI Agent was specifically told that the informant was permitted to enter the premises
only at Mr. Manafort’s direction. (See FBI Aff. ¶ 30.) The fact that the FBI Agent did not ask the
former DMP employee reasonable follow-up questions and include that information for the
magistrate judge to review in the subsequent application for a search warrant, speaks volumes.
Just as in Boyer, supra, a technical property interest is not the same as having actual or apparent
authority over the premises to be searched. For these reasons, the Court should conclude that the
informant did not have apparent authority to allow the FBI Agent to conduct the warrantless initial
search of the storage unit.
3. Suppression is the appropriate remedy for the warrantless initial search
The appropriate remedy is suppression of all evidence seized by the government from the
premises and the fruits thereof. See United States v. Gaines, 668 F.3d 170, 173 (4th Cir. 2012)
(citing United States v. Andrews, 577 F.3d 231, 235 (4th Cir. 2009)).

12
 

Suppression is required

 where “a causal relationship exists between [the Fourth Amendment] violation and the discovery
of evidence sought to be excluded.” United States v. Clark, 891 F.2d 501, 505 (4th Cir. 1989).
Here, the causal connection between the government’s violation of the Fourth Amendment
and the evidence it obtained from the initial search is clear. But for the impermissible warrantless
initial search of the storage unit, the FBI Agent would have had scant knowledge of its specific
contents and could not have satisfied the particularity requirement to keep this from being an
unconstitutional general search and seizure warrant. Because the FBI Agent would not have been
in a position to swear out an affidavit to establish probable cause for a warrant to search the storage
unit, the Search Warrant would have never been issued and the materials would have never been
seized. There is no basis alleged here for the government to argue the concepts of inevitable
discovery, or discovery by independent means, nor is there a factual basis to argue that any
subsequent action purged the taint of the unconstitutional warrantless search. Accordingly, all
evidence that the government seized from the storage unit, and the fruits thereof, must be
suppressed.
B. The Search Warrant was unconstitutionally overbroad
1. The Search Warrant was an impermissible “all documents” warrant
Even if the Search Warrant was not invalid in light of the FBI’s warrantless search, it was
fatally overbroad in scope because it allowed the searching agents to indiscriminately seize items
and evidence from the storage unit. The Fourth Amendment simply does not permit the warrant
that was issued in this case, which was essentially a general warrant for “any and all” documents
without any temporal limitation. The Fourth Amendment provides: “The right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or

13
 

 affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be
seized.” U.S. Const. Amend. IV. The purpose of the Fourth Amendment’s warrant clause is to
ensure that “those searches deemed necessary should be as limited as possible.” Coolidge v. New
Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 467 (1971). “[T]he specific evil” in this case “is the ‘general warrant’
abhorred by the colonists, and the problem is not the intrusion per se, but of a general, exploratory
rummaging in a person’s belongings.” Coolidge, 403 U.S. at 467; see also Arizona v. Grant, 556
U.S. 332, 345 (2009) (“[T]he central concern underlying the Fourth Amendment [is] the concern
about giving police officers unbridled discretion to rummage at will among a person’s private
effects.”); United States v. Young, 260 F. Supp. 3d 530, 546 (E.D. Va. 2017) (“The Framers
included the particularity requirement to end the practice of issuing general warrants[.]”). The
Constitution limits law enforcement’s rights to search only “the specific areas and things for which
there is probable cause to search,” and requires “that the search will be carefully tailored to its
justifications, and will not take on the character of the wide-ranging exploratory searches the
Framers intended to prohibit.” Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79, 84 (1987). Thus, the Fourth
Amendment requires that warrants “identif[y] the items to be seized by their relation to the
designated crimes” such that “the description of the items leaves nothing to the discretion of the
officer executing the warrant.” United States v. Williams, 592 F.3d 511, 519 (4th Cir. 2010).
The Search Warrant in the case at bar fell short of the constitutional requirements set out
above. The Search Warrant directed the seizure of, inter alia, “[a]ny and all financial records”
related to Mr. Manafort or any companies associated with him, (see Search Warrant, Attachment
B, ¶ 1a. (emphasis added)), “[a]ny and all federal and state tax documentation, including but not
limited to personal and business tax returns and all associated schedules” (id. ¶ 1b. (emphasis

14
 

 added)), all communications related to “any foreign financial institution,” (id. ¶ 1b5. (emphasis
added)), “[a]ny and all correspondence, communication, memorandum or record of any kind
relating to” Mr. Manafort’s work, (id. ¶ 1c. (emphases added)), “any and all daily planners, logs,
calendars, schedule books”, (id. ¶ 1g. (emphasis added)), and “[c]omputers or storage media” that
the executing agents were somehow able to recognize during their search as having been used in
connection with the offenses under investigation, (id. ¶ 2.).
As set out above, the Search Warrant functioned as a general warrant that authorized an
unfettered search and seizure of documents contained within the storage unit. It violated the core
purpose of the particularity requirement which “protects against general warrants that authorize
exploratory rummaging … by requiring a particular description of the things to be seized.”
Williams, 592 F.3d at 519 (citing Andresen v. Maryland, 427 U.S. 463, 480 (1976)). As one
appellate court recently observed, this is especially true where law enforcement agents are not
seeking illegal contraband but are instead searching for and seizing purely innocuous items such
as documents or electronic devices. See United States v. Griffith, 867 F.3d 1265, 1276 (D.C. Cir.
2017) (finding warrant that permitted seizure of “all electronic devices” unconstitutionally
overbroad); see also United States v. Gray, 78 F. Supp. 2d 524, 528-29 (E.D. Va. 1999) (observing
that “documents, unlike illegal drugs or contraband, may not appear incriminating on their face”
and that “care must be taken to minimize the intrusion[.]”).
2. The Search Warrant for the storage unit bore no temporal limitation
For a search warrant to be valid, it must provide the executing agents with guidance as to
the time frame for which the agents are to seize evidence. In other words, if the Special Counsel
is investigating potential offenses for the years 2006 through 2017, then the search warrant must

                                                            
5
Attachment B to the Search Warrant contains two sections labeled “1b.”.
15
 

 limit agents to searching for and seizing evidence that relates to offenses for those years. This
Search Warrant lacked any temporal limitation at all, making it impermissibly broad and leaving
the decision of what to seize to the discretion of the agents.
The Fourth Amendment requires that “those searches deemed necessary should be as
limited as possible.” Coolidge, 403 U.S. at 467. “Failure to limit broad descriptive terms by
relevant dates, when such dates are available to the police, will render a warrant overbroad.”
United States v. Ford, 184 F.3d 566, 576 (6th Cir. 1999). The relevant dates were manifestly
available to the agents in this case. Indeed, in the affidavit the FBI Agent states that the
investigation of Mr. Manafort had begun in 2014 (see FBI Aff. ¶ 5.); it is inconceivable that the
government was unable to specify a time frame for the search given that its agents had allegedly
been examining the defendant’s actions for almost three years prior to the search. Moreover, the
other warrants that the government executed in this case do provide a temporal limitation,
implicitly acknowledging the fatal flaw in this search warrant application. As noted above, the
warrant’s descriptive terms were impermissibly broad by their own right, authorizing the seizure
of “[a]ny and all financial records for Paul Manafort, Richard Gates or companies associated with
Paul Manafort or Richard Gates.” (Search Warrant, Attachment B ¶ 1a.) Unbound by any time
frame, a warrant that authorizes the seizure of any and all financial records of the targets of the
investigation for any and all years is a general warrant that is repugnant to and violative of the
Fourth Amendment.
Federal courts have repeatedly pointed to the absence of a temporal limitation as an
indicator of a warrant’s unconstitutional overbreadth. See, e.g., United States v. Blake, 868 F.3d
960, 974 (11th Cir. 2017) (“[T]he warrants should have requested data only from the period of
time during which Moore was suspected of taking part in the prostitution conspiracy.”); In re 650

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 Fifth Ave. & Related Props., 830 F.3d 66, 84 (2d Cir. 2016) (“Nor does the warrant place any
temporal limit on the property to be seized.”); United States v. Yusuf, 461 F.3d 374, 395 (3d Cir.
2006) (finding a search warrant valid in part because it was restricted to a fixed time period);
United States v. Abboud, 438 F.3d 554, 576 (6th Cir. 2006) (invalidating a warrant that was limited
to a six-year period on the ground that probable cause only supported the seizure of evidence
pertaining to a three-month period); United States v. Kow, 58 F.3d 423, 427 (9th Cir. 1995) (finding
one factor in the overbreadth analysis to be the government’s failure to “limit the scope of the
seizure to a time frame within which the suspected criminal activity took place, even though [the]
affidavit indicates that the alleged criminal activity began relatively late in [the business’s]
existence.”); United States v. Leary, 846 F.2d 592, 604 (10th Cir. 1988) (warrant impermissibly
failed to limit itself to the “specific period of time coincident to the suspect transaction”); United
States v. Abrams, 615 F.2d 541, 543 (1st Cir. 1980) (finding warrant overbroad in part because it
contained “no limitation as to time”).
According to his affidavit, during the warrantless initial search the FBI Agent observed file
boxes bearing dates going back 30 years, (see FBI Aff. ¶ 36), demonstrating that the government
knew that the storage unit contained materials predating the years identified as being under
investigation by more than two decades. Despite this, nothing in the Search Warrant limited the
agents’ seizure of materials based on their temporal relevance to the Special Counsel’s
investigation. With this temporally-unbound warrant in hand, the agents did not need to spend any
time determining which materials were relevant to the years under investigation, which is evident
from the relative swiftness in which this search and seizure was accomplished
Moreover, the FBI Affidavit cannot save this defective warrant. The Supreme Court has
made clear that the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirements must be satisfied “in the

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 warrant, not in the supporting documents.” Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 557 (2004) (emphasis
added). A court may only “construe a warrant with reference to a supporting application or
affidavit if the warrant uses appropriate words of incorporation, and if the supporting document
accompanies the warrant.” Id. at 557–58. In the Fourth Circuit, a supporting affidavit must either
be incorporated into a search warrant by reference or “be attached to the warrant itself.” United
States v. Hurwitz, 459 F.3d 463, 471 (4th Cir. 2006). Here, the Search Warrant did not incorporate
the FBI Affidavit, nor was the FBI Affidavit attached to the Search Warrant, rendering it a general
warrant for all financial documents covering any time period.
C. The executing agents improperly seized materials beyond the warrant’s scope and
returned a search inventory so general as to violate the requirement of an inventory
Even where the particularity requirement is satisfied – and here it was not – “[i]t is
axiomatic that a ‘search conducted pursuant to a warrant is limited in scope by the terms of the
warrant’s authorization.’” United States v. Kimble, 855 F.3d 604, 610 (4th Cir. 2017) (quoting
United States v. Phillips, 588 F.3d 218, 223 (4th Cir. 2009)). The Constitution requires “that the
search will be carefully tailored to its justifications, and will not take on the character of the wideranging exploratory searches the Framers intended to prohibit.” Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S.
79, 84 (1987). As this Court has observed, a search warrant “must enable the executing officer to
ascertain and identify with reasonable certainty those items that the magistrate has authorized him
to seize, and thus prevent the seizure of one thing under a warrant describing another.” United
States v. Hoang Anh Thi Duong, 156 F. Supp. 2d 564, 571 (E.D. Va. 2001) (citations and quotation
marks omitted). This requirement prevents law enforcement officials from disregarding the limits
set forth in a warrant by conducting a “fishing expedition or a general, exploratory rummaging in
a person’s belongings once the police have gained access to the home.” Id. at 572 (citation and
quotation marks omitted). As the Fourth Circuit has explained, “the seizure of items not described
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 in the warrant violates the Fourth Amendment – and the items should be suppressed – unless an
exception to the warrant requirement applies.” United States v. Legg, 18 F.3d 240, 242 (4th Cir.
1994).
The agents that executed the Search Warrant in this case ran afoul of the above principle
and seized far beyond what the Search Warrant allowed. This is clear from the Search Warrant
Return inventory, which simply lists nine categories of unidentified “documents” seized by the
agent (with the exception of line item #1, which lists a category of unidentified “documents and
binders”). (See Search Warrant Return.) Accordingly, the searching agents improperly seized far
in excess of what they were authorized to seize, without regard for which “documents” and
“binders” they were authorized, or not authorized, to take.
In addition, Rule 41 of Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure sets forth procedures that the
government must follow when seeking and executing search and seizure warrants. After executing
a search warrant, “[a]n officer present during the execution of the warrant must prepare and verify
an inventory of any property seized.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 41(f). As noted above, after searching the
premises, the agents prepared a document that purported to be an inventory but which was instead
a perfunctory statement that the FBI seized “documents” and “documents and binders.” This
description fails entirely to inform either “the person from whom, or from whose premises, the
property was taken,” or the Court what the agents seized. Id.
Courts analyze alleged violations of Rule 41 by first considering if the Rule was in fact
violated and, if it was, determining whether the violation rose to a violation of the Fourth
Amendment. See United States v. Krueger, 809 F.3d 1109, 1113 (10th Cir. 2015). Here, the
purported inventory was so devoid of description as to be a violation of Rule 41.

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 A search and seizure that leaves the subject without a reasonable description of what was
seized is an unreasonable search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment and requires
suppression of the fruits of the seizure. In the alternative, if a court
determine[s] that the Rule 41 violation is not of constitutional
import, [it] then consider[s] whether the defendant can establish
that, as a result of the Rule violation, (1) there was prejudice in the
sense that the search might not have occurred or would not have
been so abrasive if the Rule had been followed, or (2) there is
evidence of intentional and deliberate disregard of a provision in the
Rule.
Id. at 1114. Here, the inventory is so bare as to rise to the level of an intentional and deliberate
disregard of Rule 41, and thus suppression is warranted.
D. All evidence seized from the storage unit should be suppressed
Evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment, as well as the fruits thereof, is
subject to suppression. See Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 139 (2009) (holding that the
exclusionary rule forbids use of improperly obtained evidence at trial). The primary purpose of
the exclusionary rule “is to deter future unlawful police conduct and thereby effectuate the
guarantee of the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures.” United States
v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 347 (1974). See also United States v. Oscar-Torres, 507 F.3d 224, 227
(4th Cir. 2007) (exclusionary rule precludes “evidence obtained during illegal police conduct” and
“evidence that is the indirect product of the illegal activity.”) (citations omitted).
In this case, without the FBI Agent’s illegal and warrantless initial search, the Search
Warrant in this case would have never been issued, and the evidence from the storage unit would
have never been seized. When the Search Warrant was issued, it was impermissibly overbroad;
and even if it was sufficiently particularized, the agents ignored its scope and improperly seized
virtually everything from the premises. Accordingly, the exclusionary rule should be applied, and
the evidence from the storage unit suppressed, because the Search Warrant was fundamentally
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 flawed from the outset, it was insufficiently particularized and, even it did not suffer these
infirmities, it was executed in an impermissibly overbroad fashion.
III.

CONCLUSION
Wherefore, Mr. Manafort respectfully moves the Court to suppress the evidence seized and

all fruits of the government’s search of the storage unit on the grounds stated herein.
Dated: April 30, 2018

Respectfully submitted,
s/ Kevin M. Downing
Kevin M. Downing (pro hac vice)
Law Office of Kevin M. Downing
601 New Jersey Avenue NW
Suite 620
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 754-1992
kevindowning@kdowninglaw.com
s/ Thomas E. Zehnle
Thomas E. Zehnle (VSB No. 27755)
Law Office of Thomas E. Zehnle
601 New Jersey Avenue NW
Suite 620
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 368-4668
tezehnle@gmail.com
Counsel for Defendant Paul J. Manafort, Jr.

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