“The Special Counsel’s Office is aware of no information indicating that reporters were given any advance knowledge of a possible indictment from the Special Counsel’s Office,” prosecutors from Robert Mueller’s team wrote. | Alex Wong/Getty Images mueller investigation Mueller rebuffs Roger Stone’s claims that feds tipped off CNN In a court filing, his team said Stone’s sealed indictment was properly released minutes after the GOP operative’s arrest.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office is formally denying Roger Stone’s claims that journalists got early access to his indictment last month, allowing CNN to film the GOP operative’s arrest.

In a court filing Friday, Mueller prosecutors said Stone’s sealed indictment was ordered to be automatically unsealed upon Stone’s arrest on charges of lying to congressional investigators and intimidating a witness. In accordance with that order, Mueller’s office notified reporters of the indictment and posted it on the office’s website shortly after the FBI raided Stone’s South Florida home and took him into custody just after 6 a.m. on Jan. 25, prosecutors said.


“The government’s public release of the indictment shortly after the defendant’s arrest was consistent with the order sealing the indictment,” Mueller attorneys and lawyers from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington argued in their submission Friday.

“The order does not state, as many unsealing orders do, that the indictment shall remain sealed until further order of the Court. Rather, the order conditioned the unsealing of the indictment on one event: the defendant’s arrest,” prosecutors wrote.

Stone’s lawyers have objected to the release of the charges, arguing that the indictment should have remained under seal until someone in the court clerk’s office unsealed it and that prosecutors breached grand jury secrecy by releasing it before that time.

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The defense team also suggested that prosecutors gave reporters a heads-up about Stone’s arrest, potentially contributing to the presence of a reporter and a cameraman from CNN outside Stone’s home when the heavily armed FBI team showed up.

However, Mueller’s team told U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson it does not believe any journalists were informed in advance about the indictment.

“The Special Counsel’s Office is aware of no information indicating that reporters were given any advance knowledge of a possible indictment from the Special Counsel’s Office,” prosecutors wrote in a footnote to their Friday filing.

Prosecutors also noted that CNN has publicly denied having advance knowledge about Stone’s arrest, saying it decided to stake out Stone’s house because of various public clues that his arrest was imminent.

Late Friday afternoon, Jackson seemed to side with prosecutors that they had the right to release the indictment once Stone was arrested. However, she issued no final ruling on the issue and asked Mueller’s office to provide some more specifics by Tuesday about exactly when Stone was arrested, what time the document was posted on the office website, when notice of it was emailed out and to whom it was emailed. The judge also said she wants to see records providing those details.

Stone’s lawyers had also argued that metadata attached to the initial indictment on the special counsel’s website provided evidence that someone with the initials “AAW” had leaked the document. Those happen to be the initials of Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann.

However, prosecutors said Friday the metadata don’t provide any insight into the release of the indictment.

“Insofar as the defendant contends that the presence of metadata in the document is relevant, metadata merely shows when the document was created, not when the document was released,” the prosecutors wrote.