Roger Stone wins access to redacted parts of Mueller report
A federal judge rejected Roger Stone's bid to have the criminal charges against him dismissed, but will allow the Trump ally to see some redacted portions of former special counsel Robert Mueller's report.
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson of D.C., who last month ruled that Stone had broken her February gag order and banned him from using any social media for the duration of the trial, released a 56-page ruling Thursday that Stone’s attorneys “hadn’t identified any legal grounds that would support dismissing” the case involving charges of obstruction of justice and lying to Congress as well as tampering with a witness. The judge also rejected Stone’s efforts to stall the case and to his efforts to gain access to the internal deliberations of the prosecution team. The judge reminded Stone of his seven-count indictment stemming from the alleged outreach he did to Wikileaks to try to help Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Mueller’s report concluded that the Russian government interfered in 2016 in a variety of ways, including by Russian intelligence hacking the Democratic National Committee’s email systems and providing those emails through cut-outs such as Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks to Wikileaks for dissemination. Mueller did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Russians and any members of the Trump campaign. Stone argued that the Justice Department had improperly gained access to the transcript of his testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, but Berman noted that, after the Justice Department requested the transcript in 2018, then-Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes of California handed the information over to DOJ after a committee vote and with no restrictions on how it could be used. “The defendant’s argument that the prosecution is founded upon an improper disclosure of information is unavailing, and he can hardly claim that the Special Counsel reached out and grabbed this issue without congressional participation or assent,” Berman ruled.
Stone also argued that he was only charged by Mueller because of his association with President Trump, but Berman wrote that “one cannot overlook the fact the Special Counsel’s specific charter was to look into any links or coordination between people associated with the campaign and the Russian interference in the election.” Thus, the judge ruled, “the mere fact that an individual who was at one time associated with the campaign became a focus of the special counsel’s attention is not remarkable, and standing alone, it is not sign of improper motivation.”
Although Berman tossed aside Stone’s requests to have the case thrown out, she did rule that Stone should be allowed to look at most of the parts of Mueller’s report currently blacked out due to “harm to ongoing matter” where he’s named or referenced, including portions of a couple pages from Mueller’s executive summary in the sections on Wikileaks and Trump associates lying to investigators. The judge also said that Stone should get access to unredacted selected parts of another fifteen or so pages covering topics like contacts with Wikileaks and the GRU’s Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks, the dissemination of Wikileaks emails, communications and reactions of the Trump campaign related to these topics, and a number of names from the report’s appendix. The judge made it clear that Stone “shall not distribute this information… to anyone outside the defense team or use it for any purpose outside of Mr. Stone’s defense in this matter.” Stone’s trial is set for Nov. 5.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/roger-stone-wins-access-to-redacted-parts-of-mueller-report