A federal judge, Amy Berman Jackson, just shut down Roger Stone's proposed hearing on demanding federal prosecutors "show cause for why they were not in contempt of court for allegedly leaking a copy of [Stone's] indictment to the press," Talking Points Memo reported Wednesday.
Stone and his lawyers had argued that CNN must have been "tipped off" in advance of the early morning raid on his home in Florida and were somehow in cahoots with the cable network, instead of CNN simply engaging in stakeout journalism in order to film the FBI raid as it happened January 25th.
But Jackson said Stone “supplied no reason to believe that any contempt of court had occurred,” and that Stone's lack of evidence introduced on the matter “demonstrate that there is no basis” to issue a contempt order.
The FBI and government are allowed to release details of any arrest after an arrest happens, which is what the agency did in Stone's situation, and not before the arrest, the judge said.
"Defendant’s recitation of the events reflects nothing more than the fact that the reporter had the indictment in hand after the defendant was arrested," she wrote in the memo that was released Wednesday. The judge continued by saying "there is no evidence that the reporter had it earlier."
Read the full report here.
