THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

In a new court filing on Thursday, the special counsel's office revealed additional details of the probe that indicate he has recently expanded his investigation of Paul Manafort. The further implication of this filing is that Mueller is actively building a collusion case against the former Trump campaign chairman or other Trump campaign officials, and potentially basing it on the testimony of former Manafort deputy Rick Gates.

The new details show that Mueller's team acquired search warrants on five telephone numbers last month, just two weeks after Gates began to officially cooperate in Mueller's probe.

The filing was a response to a motion from Manafort's attorneys to see additional details of search warrants related to Manafort. For the most part, Mueller's team has turned over these details. But as it pertained to a warrant obtained on March 9 for the phone numbers, the special counsel's office insisted that the warrant be redacted because they are "relating to ongoing investigations that are not the subject of either of the current prosecutions involving Manafort."

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