On Monday special counsel Robert Mueller made his first arrests in what started out as an investigation of alleged “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia but which has mushroomed into a much wider probe of Team Trump.

Mueller indicted former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and another campaign official, Rick Gates, on multiple charges including conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the United States, being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, and false and misleading statements.

All of this said, however, the entire probe and Mueller’s case against – whomever – may be tainted by the fact that the FBI likely relied on a bogus political document and the Justice Department Mueller works for in order to obtain secret court warrants to investigate Manafort in the first place.

As noted by The National Sentinel, last month CNN reported that investigators conducted electronic surveillance on Manafort before and after the Nov. 8 election under the authority of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court (FISA) warrant. The article cited unnamed sources, which led many to speculate that the information had been leaked – a violation of law that could be traced back to the FBI itself, to Mueller’s office of special counsel, or both.

Jerome Corsi writes:

Under the “fruit of the poison tree doctrine” established by the Supreme Court in Fourth Amendment illegal search and seizure cases, the FBI and/or Mueller may have compromised their entire investigation of Paul Manafort by either using the fraudulent “Russia dossier” paid for in part by the FBI, or by illegally leaking information derived from the FISA-authorized electronic surveillance to CNN and other mainstream media publications known to be partisan “Never Trump” mouthpieces.

It should be understood that regardless of what “mainstream media” outlets have reported, nothing substantial contained in the 35-page “dossier” – which we now know was bought and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee – has been verified after more than a year. The document has always been an elaborate hoax, a political hit job packaged as legitimate “intelligence” on a political candidate and his team. (Related: Remember that Trump ‘dossier?’ That was Democrats using RUSSIA-fed info to attack the prez.)

It was created out of whole cloth as a political weapon designed to destroy Trump’s credibility and to be used as a legal tool with which to get him impeached. But the problem is, if the document is fake – and it is – then it cannot be relied on as “legitimate intelligence,” meaning that any FISA warrants and evidence gathered from the warrant cannot be legitimate, either.

And that sounds like what happened.

CNN noted further that the secret FISA warrant had been sought and obtained by agents after Manafort became the subject of an investigation beginning as far back as 2014 under then-FBI Director James Comey, and which started focusing on Manafort’s consulting work with the government of Ukraine.

“Some of the intelligence collected includes communications that sparked concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians to help with the campaign, according to three sources familiar with the investigation. Two of these sources, however, cautioned that the evidence is not conclusive,” CNN reported.

“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which is leading the investigation into Russia’s involvement in the election, has been provided details of these communications,” the CNN report noted further.

There is also some concern over leaks. On Friday CNN – which appears to be the ‘preferred network’ for leakers tied to Mueller’s probe – passed along information that someone was going to be indicted by the special counsel on Monday. That, of course, turned out to be true.

There’s just one problem: According to House Government Reform and Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., a former federal prosecutor, the leaking is against the law.

“In the only conversation I’ve had with Robert Mueller, I stressed to him the importance of cutting out the leaks,” Gowdy told “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s kind of ironic that the people charged with investigating the law and the violations of the law would violate the law.”

J. D. Heyes is senior editor of The National Sentinel and a senior contributor to NewsTarget.com.

Sources include:

TheNationalSentinel.com

NBCNews.com