“I remembered, the jackhammer was never on.” But the window shoppers and the telephone people fooled him. Later, Pras thought about the missed signals on that warm fall day. He’d already been indicted once, and the FBI swarm was just the latest surreal moment of a sprawling, 11-year-long Justice Department investigation that followed Pras from Washington, D.C., to Bangkok to Hong Kong, and has already produced guilty pleas or immunity deals for four others (including a former finance chair of the Republican National Committee) in an alleged conspiracy to take hundreds of millions of embezzled Malaysian dollars in exchange for running a foreign-influence campaign against the U.S. Pras probably should have known that the feds had a drop on him. “When you think about it, what the fuck do I really need to be in politics for? There’s no reason - my life is great - if it’s not to try to help people. I used to think getting into politics was a way to try to help people,” Pras says. “I tried, but what do you say? ‘I had a sting operation on me?’ Who’s gonna believe that? Who the fuck is gonna believe that story? My lawyer almost didn’t believe it, until he heard it from the FBI.” When he got his phone back a few weeks later, he saw that the damage was done. The whole process in the lobby took about 45 minutes, at which point Pras realized he had not only stood up his date, but had no way of telling her what had happened. They instructed him to remove the passwords. Four FBI agents, two in business suits, two in their disguises, followed Pras into his lobby, frisked him for weapons, read him his rights, and explained that they were confiscating his iPhone and Blackberry.
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