FBI searches Virginia Senate leader’s office as part of corruption probe, AP source says
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The FBI searched the Virginia state Senate leader’s office on Wednesday as part of a corruption investigation, a person familiar with the matter said.
The search at Virginia Sen. L. Louise Lucas’s district office in Portsmouth comes after the Democrat helped lead the state’s recent redistricting effort.
The FBI said only that it was conducting a court-authorized search warrant in Portsmouth. The person who confirmed the FBI’s search was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
A message seeking comment was left on a cellphone for Lucas.
Though the exact nature of the investigation was unclear, the search comes as the FBI and Justice Department have opened a spate of politically charged investigations into perceived adversaries of President Donald Trump.
Last week, for instance, the Justice Department charged former FBI Director James Comey with making a threatening Instagram post against Trump, an accusation that Comey — who for nearly a decade has drawn the president’s ire — has denied. A separate mortgage fraud case, ultimately dismissed by a court, targeted Democratic New York state Attorney General Letitia James, who had brought a major civil fraud lawsuit against Trump and his business.
The FBI and Justice Department have also provoked concerns among Democrats regarding ongoing election-related investigations, including the seizure by agents of ballots and other information from Fulton County, Georgia.
Amid a national, state-by-state partisan redistricting fight kicked off by Trump’s desire to aid his fellow Republicans, Virginia voters in April approved a Democrat-backed constitutional amendment authorizing new U.S. House districts. The plan could help the party win up to four additional seats.
Lucas has been a vocal leader of the effort.
“We are not going to let anyone tilt the system without a response,” she said after voters approved the map in April. Trump, meanwhile, denounced the results.
The state Supreme Court let the referendum proceed but has yet to rule whether the effort is legal. The court is considering an appeal of a lower court judge’s ruling that the amendment is invalid because lawmakers violated procedural requirements.
Voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade, after each census. But Trump last year urged Texas Republicans to redraw House districts to give the GOP an edge in the midterms. California Democrats reciprocated, and redistricting efforts soon cascaded across states.
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Associated Press writer Dylan Lovan contributed from Louisville, Ky.