A judge has upheld a warrant allowing federal agents to search the email account of indicted political operative Jesese Benton, who has worked for Rand Paul, Ron Paul and Mitch McConnell, according to court documents unsealed today.
Magistrate Judge Helen Adams on Monday rejected a request by Jesse Benton to quash a warrant that orders Google Inc. to turn over the contents of his Gmail account dating back to March 2011. On Tuesday, she unsealed her order and other court documents that show Benton had resisted the warrant for 11 months.
As part of the investigation, U.S. Magistrate Thomas Shields approved an FBI request for the warrant to obtain Benton's Gmail account last year. But Google declined to produce the documents after Benton's attorney, Roscoe Howard, told the company he would challenge the warrant as overly broad.
In her ruling, Adams noted that Shields found probable cause to support the warrant and that Benton cited no legal authority that would block it.
The unsealed records show Benton had given permission to the FBI last year to search the account, then withdrew it days later after investigators started combing through documents.
Benton's lawyer declined to comment to AP. In his letter Monday, he argued the government lacked probable cause to search the entire account and was engaged in a "fishing expedition." He said his client had already turned over many responsive documents during the investigation and supplied a 50,000-page summary chart describing each email.
He also said that the account contains nearly 500,000 emails, including communications related to the presidential campaign of Kentucky senator Rand Paul, the 2014 re-election of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and the 2012 presidential campaign of Ron Paul.
-RW
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