The judge in Roger Stone's case wants to review blacked-out sections of the Mueller report as she weighs a bid by Stone's lawyers to dismiss the case. | Win McNamee/Getty Images legal Judge demands unredacted Mueller report in Roger Stone case

Federal prosecutors handling Roger Stone’s case were ordered on Thursday to turn over to a judge any unredacted sections of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report relating to the longtime GOP operative that could help prepare his defense for their upcoming trial.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson in a one-paragraph order gave the U.S. attorneys handling the Stone case until Monday to provide her with portions of Mueller’s report that deal with Stone “and/or ‘the dissemination of hacked materials’” that were leaked during the 2016 presidential campaign to the detriment of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.


Jackson said she wants to review in private those blacked-out sections of the Mueller report as she weighs several motions from Stone’s lawyers requesting access as part of a larger bid to dismiss the case. Mueller charged Stone in January with lying to Congress and obstructing the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, with a trial in Washington scheduled to begin Nov. 5.

Stone’s lawyers last month asked for the entire Mueller report as they pressed Jackson to toss out the case before trial. His attorneys are also trying to get the case transferred from Jackson, who presided over the guilty plea and sentencing of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, as well as several other Mueller-related matters.

But federal prosecutors who took over the Stone case last month upon the conclusion of the Mueller probe filed an opposition motion Friday arguing against turning over the special counsel’s unredacted report to the defense.

“The government is complying with its discovery obligations in this case, including its obligation to provide the defense with disclosable material that could be construed as exculpatory as well as information regarding the credibility of witnesses that the government intends to call at trial,” the lawyers from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia wrote. “Because disclosable information that may have been redacted from the public version of the Special Counsel’s report to the Attorney General is already being provided to the defendant in discovery, the defendant is not entitled to an unredacted copy of the report.”

Stone’s attempt to see the redacted Mueller report is one of a handful of legal bids working their way through the courts dealing with the special counsel’s work. The Electronic Privacy Information Center and BuzzFeed are suing the Justice Department under the Freedom of Information Act for the entire unredacted Mueller report and its underlying evidence. House Judiciary Committee Democrats also voted on Wednesday to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress as they try to enforce a subpoena for access to the blacked-out portions of Mueller’s 448-page report, a precursor to their own upcoming court fight for the documents.

