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Roger Stone Lawyers May See Parts of Redacted Mueller Report

Roger Stone May Get Access to Parts of Redacted Mueller Report

(Bloomberg) -- Roger Stone may get access to redacted parts of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that relate to his prosecution for lying to Congress and obstructing lawmakers’ investigations.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington on Thursday ordered federal prosecutors to turn over portions of the report for her review by May 13. She specifically referenced a 24-page portion addressing the dissemination of information allegedly stolen from Democratic party computers by Russian military-intelligence agents, some of which was later made public by WikiLeaks and a hacker who used the name Guccifer 2.0.

Large swaths of that section are blacked out, with notations that making them public would cause harm to an ongoing matter or disclose investigative techniques.

In his January indictment, Stone was charged with lying to Congress about his communications with WikiLeaks, which published some of that stolen information, as well as obstruction of the lawmakers’ probe and witness tampering. He pleaded not guilty.

Attorneys for the longtime Republican political operative asked the court to order prosecutors to hand over an unredacted version of the 448-page Mueller report last month, contending it contained information "essential" to his defense. Prosecutors opposed the request, telling the court that Stone’s lawyers were already being provided with the relevant evidence arising out of the Mueller probe.

Made public in redacted form on April 18, the special counsel’s report laid out Mueller’s findings from his nearly two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the possible complicity of President Donald Trump’s campaign and whether the president obstructed the probe.

While Mueller determined there was insufficient proof to bring conspiracy charges against anyone in the campaign, he declined to draw a conclusion on the question of obstruction, leaving further pursuit of that issue in the hands of Congress.

Peter Carr, who had been a spokesman for the special counsel, referred a request for comment on Jackson’s ruling to Kadia Koroma, a spokeswoman for Washington U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu, whose office is now handling the Stone matter. Koroma didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Stone’s trial is set for Nov. 5.

The case is US. v. Stone, 19-cr-18, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Harris in Washington at aharris16@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider, Steve Stroth

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