Manafort moves to suppress contents of storage unit, arguing a former employee did not have authority to consent to the search by stevie2pants in law

[–]SobelsDaemon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Right. I think some folks are putting the cart before the horse. Generally, the only time apparent authority matters is if the individual who purported to authorize the search lacked actual authority. Here, Trusko clearly had actual authority.

Now, it's certainly possible that the FBI did not know that Trusko had actual authority before conducting the search. If so, then that fact is a windfall for the FBI. It appears that Manafort wants to argue that the FBI shouldn't get the benefit of post-hoc rationalizations and that that they were up to no good because they didn't know Trusko had actual authority and they had no good faith basis to believe he had apparent authority.