In the predawn hours of Jan. 25, 2019, over a dozen heavily armed FBI agents arrived after CNN News crews were on the scene, arriving by Car, Boat, and Helicopter and raided Roger Stone’s home in South Florida and took into custody one of President Donald J. Trump’s closest longtime confidants an eternal foe to the left and a long time American Political campaign Icon. The raid footage hit social media and television in a broadcast by CNN designed to harass and humiliate Stone, his family, supporters, and the supporters of Trump’s.
So how did CNN know what was going to happen and know the timing? How did they get there so much before the FBI? And if Stone was so dangerous that he needed 12 heavily armed FBI agents in helicopters and boats, why was CNN, a civilian and unarmed news crew, allowed to stay and film before and after the raid?
Here is the footage:
Those questions have been asked in legal motions and have never been answered.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted Stone, claiming Stone was coordinating with Trump officials about “WikiLeaks’ stolen emails.” Stone was convicted in a highly suspicious trial that smacked of a secret state and two-tiered justice system, punished with a circus media trial, bankrupted, denied access to his closest friends, gagged from addressing the corrupt media, denied work, and then Trump eventually pardoned Stone.
Now Stone is talking. He still wants to know why this matter was not investigated. Americans should want to know, as well, because if it can happen like that to someone close to the President of the United States, it can happen to the least of us.
Written in 2019 and not answered yet, about CNN knew of the arrest, “Therefore, Roger Stone, by counsel, requests a show cause order directed to the Office of the Special Counsel to show cause why contempt did not occur,” Grant Smith wrote on behalf of Stone.
It is unsettled still, the matter of the unjust televised raid by CNN on Stone’s home, showing his arrest. Some question if there are legal consequences for what appears was leaked information to one media company. Were those actions an infringement of Stone’s civil rights?
In court documents, Stone and his lawyer alleging that it was Andrew Weisman who was the last to edit a document containing the arrest information, that it was Weisman who wrote to execute an arrest and search warrant. There is no proof that the CNN reporter who first had the information about the arrest and contacted Stone’s attorney, Sara Murray, got texts or emails from Weisman. Still, those questions should be investigated and could be answered if the Government took Americans’ civil liberties seriously.
CNN reporter Sara Murray emailed my lawyer Grant Smith a draft copy of my indictment three hours before it was unsealed,” Stone told me, and offered me court documents with texts.
“CNN’s claim that they pulled the document off the OSC website is disproved by the way back machine. The OSC did not post the document until it was unsealed. Clearly, CNN was in possession of an illegally leaked document- a felony for the leaker,” he said.
This is important: CNN claims they got the information from a public press release, and Stone continues to dispute that statement- and the Government has refused to investigate the matter, even at Stone’s documented legal request to do so.
Does CNN have any journalistic standards? Any Integrity? If there was no one else there, was the information really public? And did they consider the amount of damage they would cause by filming an arrest that appeared to be made purely out of political revenge?
Here are the documents that Stone alleges prove that CNN was lying about the source of their knowledge of his arrest and the raid on his home.
TIMELINE
Stone Chronology – For Motion[1] (1)
According to court documents, Timeline for the Morning of January 25, 2019
4:58 am CNN SUV with 2 people arrives and parks on the street directly in front of the Stone residence
6:04 am FBI arrives, and their operations begin
6:04 am CNN jumps out of vehicle and is permitted to begin filming the FBI activities without being asked to leave
6:06 am After Stone is arrested CNN is approached and asked to move vehicle and leave the area
6:06 am Stone walked out in bed clothes
6:11 am CNN calls counsel for Stone to inform of arrest and seek comment
6:22 am CNN provides to counsel for Stone by text message a draft copy of the indictment said to have come from the SCO
8:55 am Clerk’s office enters the unsealing of the Indictment on to the public docket
TEXT MESSAGE FROM CNN
Stone has text messages showing the date and time of the claim that there was a Press Release from SCO.
SHOW CAUSE MOTION
Page 1:
“Defendant Roger J. Stone, Jr., requests a show-cause order 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.”
METADATA
STONE’S LETTER TO GRAHAM AND COLLINS
Stone Response to Senate and House Judiciary 2.4.19 v3
“It should be noted that CNN apparently received a copy of Mr. Stone’s Indictment prior to its filing and its unsealing. This is substantiated by the metadata contained within the copy of the Indictment that was sent to me by a reporter contemporaneous with Mr. Stone’s arrest. Curiously, the copy sent to me did not contain the PACER filing notations in its header. It would be of great public interest to understand how that occurred,” Grant Smith, Stone’s attorney wrote.
The letter continued from Smith describing the timeline of Stone’s arrest:
“6:22 am I received a link from CNN Correspondent Sara Murray to the DOJ website where the indictment is posted. (It is important to note that the current copy posted there has the PACER filing confirmation in the header of each page indicating a filing date of 1/24/2019.
The copy that currently appears on the DOJ website is now different from PACER Docket Entry #1 as the one originally in PACER was replaced with a scan of the original with signatures and stamps).
6:22 am I receive, via text message from Sara Murray of CNN, what appears to be a draft copy of the indictment as it has no PACER filing notations in the header. (See attached) This makes the document provided to me different from the copy currently on the DOJ website and would appear to be prior in time to the filing and the unsealing. It is unknown how CNN had obtained a copy of a sealed indictment without a PACER filing header.
BACK TO MOTION TO SHOW CAUSE
Page 3
Additionally, the metadata of the document sent to me, also attached, indicates that the author was “AAW” and that it was created and modified on 1/23/19 at 11:04 pm using Acrobat PDF Maker for Word, a full day before it was filed with the Court under seal.
According to the PACER docket entry, the Indictment was unsealed and entered onto the public docket on January 25, 2019, without a notation as to time. It contained only the initials of the person who created the entry, “zvt.” The Clerk’s office informed counsel for Mr. Stone that the Indictment’s entry into the docket was made on January 25 at 8:55 a.m., more than two-and-a-half-hours after the news reporter sent the “draft” Indictment to counsel, and four hours after the news organization’s camera crew arrived at Mr. Stone’s house to film his arrest on the sealed Indictment.
The Court’s order sealing the Indictment stated: IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the government shall inform the
Court as soon as the defendant named in the Indictment is in custody so that the foregoing materials can be unsealed and entered on the public docket. That Stone’s 6:06 a.m. arrest preceded, by three hours, the Court being informed, is par for the course. What is not par for the course is that a news crew knew the time and place of the arrest, and was “staked out” to watch the arrest unfold, having been provided an unfiled, draft copy of the indictment the Court had ordered sealed.
Kari is an ex-Community Organizer who writes about Voter Engagement, Cultural Marxism and Campaigns. She has been a grassroots volunteer with the GOP, on and off for 18 years. She is a Homeschool Mom in North Carolina and loves Photojournalism and Citizen Journalism. @Saorsa1776
They all need to be put in gulags and throw away the keys.