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The issue was raised Tuesday during a hearing before the court of procedure regarding documents that Stone is entitled to check when his lawyers prepare for his November trial. Stone pleaded not guilty at the beginning of the year for lying to a congressional committee investigating the Russian interference in electoral matters.
"To the extent that the special advocate's report contains redacted material relating to this case, they can not be discovered by the defendant," said prosecutor Jonathan Kravis.
Stone's lawyers want to review sections of the report on Stone, as well as additional internal documents from the Special Council Office, such as memos from FBI agents who interviewed witnesses who might be called upon to testify. testify against Stone.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who oversees the case, said she could privately review the excerpt from the report on Stone, so that she can determine if Stone needs this information to defend herself. . Prosecutors said they were "certainly willing" to achieve this.
Parts of the report detail Stone's efforts to contact WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential campaign and how he coordinated these efforts with members of the Trump team. These sections could also include assessments of the credibility of individuals who may testify against Stone. Anything in the report that undermines their credibility could be helpful to Stone's defense.
But on the whole, all these sections of the report are obscured because they could cause "harm to an ongoing case", which is likely the case of Stone, who is still in its infancy.
"The mere fact of publishing the redacted version of the special council report does not in itself create any other obligations in terms of discovering the report," Kravis said.
Stone, a longtime friend and supporter of the president, was indicted in January for lying to Congress, tampering with witnesses and obstructing the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russia's interference. He pleaded not guilty and publicly decried Mueller's investigation, now complete, as a trick designed to undermine Trump.
The trial must begin in November. So far, the first phases of this case have been focused on the rigor of the gag order and the wealth of evidence to be examined.
A so-called "trickster", Stone would have lied to Congress about his action during the 2016 campaign with WikiLeaks, which allegedly published thousands of harmful emails stolen from Trump's opponents. Prosecutors also said that Stone had coordinated this awareness campaign with senior officials of the Trump campaign, even though he had testified before Congress that he had acted entirely on his own.
The case was introduced by Mueller's team, but was passed to prosecutors at the US Attorney's Office in Washington after Mueller completed his investigation in March. In its full report, Mueller's special counsel said his investigation did not establish a criminal plot between the Trump team and the Russian government to coordinate the 2016 election.
Adam Jed and Aaron Zelinsky, two prosecutors of Mueller's team, appeared in court on Tuesday. For the first time in this case, they were identified as being "with the US Attorney's Office" and not with the Special Advocate's Office.
CNN's Sam Fossum contributed to this report.
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