FBI Seized Roger Stone’s Cellphones, Computers, Hard Drives
FBI Seized Roger Stone’s Cellphones, Computers, Hard Drives
(Bloomberg) -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation seized Roger Stone’s cellphones, computers and hard drives in raids on his house, apartment and office in Florida and Manhattan last week, prosecutors said.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller provided a glimpse of some of the items recovered in a brief court filing Thursday that explained to the judge why both sides will need time to prepare for trial. The government’s evidence includes “multiple hard drives containing several terabytes of information” with FBI case reports, search warrant applications and the contents of Apple iCloud accounts and email accounts, according to the filing.
The FBI also has bank and financial records and various electronic devices belonging to the longtime confidant of President Donald Trump, they said.
The breadth of the government’s evidence indicates that prosecutors have dug deeply into Stone’s conduct and suggests they could make additional allegations against him. Stone currently faces charges of lying to Congress, trying to persuade a witness to lie, and obstructing Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and any ties to the Trump campaign.
In Thursday’s filing, Mueller’s team disclosed that agents recovered several years of communications in iCloud and email accounts and computer files. Information seized in the raid will be turned over to Stone’s legal team after the FBI reviews it to remove material covered by the attorney-client privilege.
Stone, 66, has pleaded not guilty. Ahead of a scheduled court appearance on Friday, Stone denounced Mueller’s investigation as an effort “to undo the results of the 2016 election.”
‘That’s Politics’
Federal prosecutors claim that in the months before the election, Stone was asked by Trump’s presidential campaign to contact WikiLeaks, which was releasing damaging information about Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, that had been stolen by Russians.
Holding forth in a Washington hotel ballroom on Thursday, Stone told reporters, “I did not coordinate anything with the Trump campaign or with WikiLeaks about their disclosures. My purpose was to hype the disclosures to bring voters’ and media attention” to them. “That’s called politics.”
Stone was arrested by FBI agents in his Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home before dawn on Jan. 25.
Complaining about the show of force in his arrest, Stone said agents wearing night-vision goggles and carrying assault weapons surrounded his home and “there were 17 vehicles in the front yard, two of them armored,” even though he is accused of “nonviolent process crimes” and doesn’t own a gun.
--With assistance from Billy House.
To contact the reporters on this story: Andrew Harris in Washington at aharris16@bloomberg.net;Bob Van Voris in federal court in Manhattan at rvanvoris@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Larry Liebert
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