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Trump Camp’s Manafort Faced FBI Raid on Russia Probe

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort faced a surprise FBI raid at his house in Alexandria, Virginia, as part of the special counsel's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (CN) - Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort faced a surprise FBI raid at his house in Alexandria, Virginia, as part of the special counsel's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

According to the report, the agents were working with special counsel Robert Mueller and arrived at Manafort's house in the early morning hours of July 26, looking for documents and other materials covered in a search warrant.

The documents the FBI scooped up in the raid overlapped at least partially with those Manafort provided to the Senate intelligence and judiciary committees, both of which are conducting their own investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. It is not clear at this point what the seized documents show or what bearing they might have on the investigation.

The FBI declined to comment on the report, and Manafort’s attorney, Wilmer Hale partner Reginald Brown, has not returned a Wednesday morning request for comment.

As reported by the Post, Manafort's "allies" believe Mueller might be digging into details of Manafort's life that go beyond the 2016 election in the hopes of securing his cooperation in the Russia probe.

Manafort has long been scrutinized for his ties to pro-Russian causes, such as lobbying work he did for a Kremlin-backed political party in Ukraine before his hiring by Trump. Having not registered as a foreign agent in the United States for the work, Manafort did so retroactively last month.

Manafort has been largely compliant with congressional investigations into Russia's attempts to interfere in the 2016 election, providing documents to all three committees that are conducting parallel probes. An exception came last month when the Senate Judiciary Committee briefly issued a subpoena for Manafort to testify at a hearing on the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The committee eventually dropped the subpoena after Manafort turned over documents, and he did not end up testifying at the public hearing on the topic.

Manafort's testimony at the hearing was highly anticipated because lawmakers were expected to press him on a meeting he attended during the campaign with Donald Trump Jr., as well as several people with ties to the Russian government, including a lawyer who has lobbied for the repeal of sanctions against Russian officials.

Trump Jr. took the meeting after being offered compromising information about Hillary Clinton, though he and others in the Trump campaign insist they received nothing of value.

The Wall Street Journal broke the news last week that Mueller has impaneled a grand jury in Washington, D.C., the second grand jury playing a role in the Russia probe. The paper earlier last month reported that Mueller had started looking into possible money laundering by Manafort as part of the larger Russia investigation.

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