Mueller report redactions on Roger Stone may be lifted next week
The Justice Department announced on Friday that redactions in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report related to longtime Trump associate Roger Stone may be lifted by next week now that his criminal case has concluded. The Electronic Privacy Information Center and BuzzFeed’s Jason Leopold filed Freedom of Information Act lawsuits for the full, unredacted Mueller report last spring in a case assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton. Last month, EPIC and BuzzFeed argued that some of the justifications for the redactions in Mueller’s report no longer applied after Stone was convicted and sentenced. In a two-page notice signed by DOJ trial attorney Courtney Enlow, the DOJ suggested on Friday that it might agree and that it would be reassessing the many Stone-related redactions quickly. It is likely that some of the redactions relate to Stone's conversations with President Trump or with members of his team.
“Following the sentencing of Mr. Stone and the lifting of the media communications order … the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy concluded that reprocessing the Mueller Report is appropriate,” the DOJ said. “The Office of Information Policy is in the process of reevaluating whether the redactions … for material related to Mr. Stone in the Mueller Report remain applicable. The Office of Information Policy anticipates that its review will be completed and, if appropriate, an updated version of the Mueller Report will be posted in OIP’s online FOIA Library no later than Friday, June 19, 2020.” Stone, a longtime Trump confidant and self-described "dirty trickster" who was convicted in a spinoff case from Mueller’s investigation, is set to begin his 40-month prison sentence on June 30. Stone reacted last month by calling it a “death sentence” for him.
He was arrested in January 2019 and was later found guilty in November on five separate counts of lying to the House Intelligence Committee during its investigation into Russian interference about his alleged outreach to WikiLeaks in 2016, one count that he “corruptly obstructed” the congressional investigation, and another for attempting to intimidate a possible congressional witness, radio host Randy Credico. Stone appealed his sentencing and conviction after the judge refused his request for a new trial amid allegations of anti-Trump juror bias, and last month, the DOJ unsealed its 33 search warrants against Stone, which showed communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Earlier this week,
Walton said he has questions about the reasoning for the DOJ's redactions and ordered the agency to provide the court with answers. “Having reviewed the unredacted version of the Mueller Report, the Court cannot assess the merits of certain redactions without further representations from the Department,” the judge wrote. Walton, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said earlier this year that he had “grave concerns about the objectivity of the process that preceded the public release of the redacted version of the Mueller report” and its “impacts on the Justice Department’s subsequent justifications” that its redactions of the report were authorized under the Freedom of Information Act. The DOJ has consistently said it did not improperly conceal anything in the report. The judge said in early March that he agreed with EPIC and BuzzFeed that Attorney General William Barr had “dubiously handled the public release” of the Mueller report. Later that month, the DOJ handed over a full, unredacted copy of Mueller’s report on Russian interference. Mueller’s report, released in April 2019, concluded that Russia interfered in a “sweeping and systematic fashion.” But the special counsel “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” In March, Walton said he "question[ed] whether Attorney General Barr’s intent was to create a one-sided narrative about the Mueller report.”
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