The Justice Department said Friday it will make public redacted portions of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report detailing the actions of longtime Trump associate Roger Stone.
“Following the sentencing of Mr. Stone and lifting of the media communications order (the Justice Department’s) Office of Information Policy concluded that reprocessing the Mueller report is appropriate,” department attorneys said in a court filing.
The attorneys said the Justice Department expects to complete its review and release the Stone portions by July 19.
The move was prompted by a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the civil liberties group Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and Jason Leopold, a reporter at BuzzFeed News.
They had argued that the Stone portions should be unredacted in light of his conviction last year for lying to Congress and obstruction.
“The Justice Department, as part of the open government case EPIC v. DOJ, has agreed to reprocess the Mueller Report by June 19 and potentially release additional material pertaining to Roger Stone,” EPIC tweeted.
Mr. Leopold, in a tweet, said the decision was a “#FOIA victory.”
Large sections of the Mueller report dealing with Stone had been redacted when it was released in April 2019 because his criminal case was pending and a judge had blocked its release to avoid coloring his jury’s views.
The Stone sections are viewed as some of the most important details of the Mueller report because it would shed greater light on the Trump campaign’s efforts in 2016 to learn about damaging emails Russians had stolen from Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
Stone was sentenced in February to nearly four months in prison for witness tampering, lying to Congress and obstructing lawmakers’ investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
He is scheduled to report to prison on June 30.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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