Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled Wednesday the special counsel's office did nothing wrong when it unsealed Roger Stone's indictment immediately following his arrest. She also rejected his accusation the government tipped off CNN.
From the order:
It is important to note that it was the OSC that asked that the indictment, which ordinarily would have been a public document from the start, be sealed in the first place. On January 24, 2019, the grand jury returned the indictment in this case. ... At that time, the Office of Special Counsel asked the court to keep the indictment under seal on its docket for a short period of time: until the defendant could be placed under arrest.
Law enforcement believes that publicity resulting from disclosure of the Indictment and related materials on the public record prior to arrest will increase the risk of the defendant fleeing and destroying (or tampering with) evidence. It is therefore essential that any information concerning the pending indictment in this district be kept sealed prior to the defendant’s arrest.
The government was further ordered to inform the Court as soon as the defendant was in custody so that the documents could be unsealed and entered on the public docket. Id. In other words, the court ordered the OSC to let it know as soon as the indictment could be unsealed on its docket.
The defendant was arrested the next day at 6:06 a.m.
After receiving confirmation of the defendant’s arrest, OSC made the fact of defendant’s indictment and arrest public. A copy of the indictment was posted on the Department of Justice website, and at 6:16 a.m., an email was transmitted to the press by the spokesperson for the Special Counsel’s Office ... It stated that defendant had been arrested, and it provided a link to the website where the court documents could be found.
Thus, according to even the defendant’s own timeline, the indictment was not disseminated to the public until after the defendant had been arrested, and the sole basis for OSC’s request that it be sealed on the public docket had evaporated. Therefore, while it appears that a news crew was indeed already at the house before the FBI arrived, there is nothing in the record to substantiate the central allegation in defendant’s motion that “a news crew knew the time and place of the arrest . . . having been provided with an unfiled, draft copy of the indictment the Court had ordered sealed.”