3-13-19

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been commissioned to investigate alleged 2016 Trump campaign collusion with Russia.

So far, there have been no collusion charges, but Mueller’s team itself now is being accused of violating the law by releasing details of the Roger Stone indictment to CNN.

According to a report at the Gateway Pundit, a new court filing from Stone’s attorneys shows CNN was in possession of a sealed indictment long before the court ordered its release.

“For weeks, we have been hearing CNN claim again and again that their presence at Stone’s home ahead of the FBI’s pre-dawn raid was a combination of ‘luck’ and good reporting. They have since built on that fairy-tale, describing their propagandist filming of Stone’s arrest the result of watching ‘unusual grand jury activity’ in the days leading up to January 25th,” the report said.

“However, we at The Gateway Pundit reported exclusively how the metadata on a draft copy of the indictment obtained by a CNN reporter and sent to Roger’s attorney after his arrest showed a save date of two days prior to the January 25th unsealing of the court documents following the Stone’s arrest,” the site reported.

“This proved that CNN illegally obtained a copy of the grand jury indictment, and now Mr. Stone’s attorneys are demanding the Mueller’s office explain themselves.”

The court filing in Washington is Stone’s “motion requesting a show cause order.”

He wants “to determine whether the court’s order sealing the indictment of Roger J. Stone until his arrest, was violated by the premature release of a draft copy of the sealed indictment, enabling news media to attend and witness Stone’s 6 a.m. arrest.”

Stone has been charged with lying and witness tampering, not collusion.

The indictment was sealed by the court until Stone was in custody.

At the time of Stone’s arrest at his home on Jan. 25, the indictment remained sealed.

But a CNN camera crew was on the scene even before the FBI arrived.

Within minutes of the arrest, a reporter sent a text message attaching a draft copy of the “still sealed indictment.”

“The copy of the unsigned indictment provided by the reporter appears to have come from the special counsel’s office,” the court filing states.

The computer code behind the document “indicates that the last ‘modification’ of the document was on January 23, 2010, apparently from the Justice Consolidated Office Network.”

That means, the filing states, “a person with privileged access to a ‘draft’ of Roger Stone’s indictment, identical to that which had been filed under seal and which was stamped ‘sealed’ in red … had – in violation of the court’s order – publicly distributed the indictment prior to its release.”

The indictment was unsealed and entered into the public docket, from which reporters could obtain the information “more than two and a half hours after the news reporter sent the ‘draft’ indictment to counsel.”

The Gateway Pundit earlier reported that home surveillance video showed FBI agents coordinating with CNN to position their film crew to televise Stone’s arrest.

“This was meant to taint the jury pool and frame the longtime Trump adviser as some sort of violent criminal mastermind that required a heavily armed 29-member FBI strike force raid on his home, despite Stone being charged with non-violent process crimes on immaterial matters,” the site said.

The Gateway Pundit said the “illegal leaking of the documents by the office of the special counsel, which the evidence suggests, is a crime that should earn the person who leaked it imprisonment or a fine, preferably both.”

Mueller’s work has been the subject of much speculation in the nearly two years he’s been investigating the collusion allegations, which were triggered in part when the Obama FBI submitted as evidence to a secret court in Washington an opposition-research document paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

The court then authorized the Obama administration to spy on the Trump campaign.

ABC News reported lawyer John Dowd, who headed the president’s legal team for a time, believes Mueller’s work will fizzle.

“I don’t think there’ll be a report,” he told the network. “I will be shocked if anything regarding the president is made public, other than ‘We’re done.'”

“This is one of the greatest frauds this country’s ever seen.”

He said there’s no merit to the investigation that was fueled in part by an unverified, anti-Trump dossier funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

The Obama FBI and the Justice Department submitted the document to a top-secret court to obtain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign.

Both House and Senate investigations have concluded there’s no evidence of collusion.

Further, a report by investigative reporter John Solomon in the Hill reveals Mueller was “once was hauled before the nation’s secret intelligence court to address a large number of instances in which the FBI cheated on sensitive surveillance warrants, according to evidence gathered by congressional investigators.”

He pointed out the events have “escaped public notice because of the secrecy embedded in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”

It’s come out now because of the testimony of a former FBI lawyer.

“The episode is taking on new significance as Mueller moves into the final stages of his Russia probe while evidence mounts that the FBI work preceding his appointment as special prosecutor may have involved improprieties in the securing of a FISA warrant to spy on Donald Trump’s campaign in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign,” Solomon explained.

He reported FBI agents applying for FISA warrants in counterterrorism and counterintelligence cases simply left out material facts.

“Such omissions are a serious matter at the FISC, because it is the one court in America where the accused gets no representation or chance to defend himself. And that means the FBI is obligated to disclose evidence of both guilt and innocence about the target of a FISA warrant,” Solomon explained.

Article printed from WND: http://www.wnd.com

URL to article: http://www.wnd.com/2019/02/mueller-illegally-gave-cnn-stone-indictment-details/

 

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