AP gave the FBI the access code to Manafort's storage locker

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Lawyers for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort are crying foul over a meeting Justice Department prosecutors held with four Associated Press reporters last year as news organizations and the FBI bore down on the longtime lobbyist and political consultant. Manafort’s defense has argued for months that the off-the-record session on April 11, 2017, was a potential conduit for improper leaks to the press about the probe that led to two criminal cases against the former Trump campaign chief.

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“The meeting raises serious concerns about whether a violation of grand jury secrecy occurred,” Manafort's lawyers wrote in a filing Friday with U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis, who’s set to oversee an upcoming trial of Manafort on bank and tax fraud charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. “Now, based on the FBI’s own notes of the meeting, it is beyond question that a hearing is warranted.”

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One of memos also says the purpose of the meeting was for the FBI to “obtain documents from the AP reporters,” although it’s unclear any documents were shown or changed hands. The memos also show that one of the AP journalists gave the FBI an unusual detail about a storage unit in Alexandria, Virginia, that Manafort used to keep records of his worldwide business dealings. Both memos say the AP revealed a code number to access the unit, although one memo says the reporters declined to share the number or location of the locker. (The memos give two slightly different versions of the code, with one suggesting it was to access a locked parking lot at the storage facility.)

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One journalism expert said he was taken aback by the AP sharing the code with the FBI, but he cautioned that the FBI's accounts are only their perspective on the meeting. “I’m surprised by the access code notation, that does seem rather unorthodox if the FBI memo is accurate in stating or implying that the AP reporters volunteered that information,” said University of Maryland journalism professor Mark Feldstein. “Generally speaking, skepticism is warranted when it comes to self-reporting by both the FBI and news outlets about their interactions.

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