FBI Hides Email Records with CNN Related to Roger Stone Raid From Public
Shane Trejo
|
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is stonewalling the public regarding possible collusion with CNN reporters before pulling their jackbooted raid of Roger Stone’s home, arresting the elderly Trump associate with a show of force worthy of El Chapo.
The Federalist filed an open records request to witness all FBI emails addressed to and from CNN before the pre-dawn raid of Stone outside of his Fort Lauderdale, FL home. The FBI quickly denied the request.
“Please provide all e-mails sent to or received from any account with a ‘cnn.com’ domain from January 24, 2019 through January 25, 2019,” The Federalist wrote in their Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request.
While it was rumored that Stone’s home would be raided and he would be prosecuted for several months before it occurred, CNN reporters knew to get in position the day it did finally did happen. The raid looked as if it was a staged public relations event for Robert Mueller’s ‘Russian collusion’ probe.
In complete disregard for the intelligence of their audience, the CNN producer behind the coverage of Stone’s raid had the gall to claim it was “reporter’s instinct” that caused the display to be timed like a Hollywood production.
“It’s reporter’s instinct,” CNN producer David Shortell said after being asked about the suspicious display. “The whole Russia team thought maybe something was happening.”
“There was some unusual grand jury activity in Washington, D.C., yesterday,” Shortell said, continuing his rationale. “Robert Mueller’s grand jury typically meets on Fridays. Yesterday, Thursday, there was grand jury activity.”
“We also had some other signs that maybe something was going on this angle, the Roger Stone angle,” Shortell added. “So we showed up at his house this morning, we were the only ones there, and lo and behold, the FBI agents did come.”
The entire raid can be viewed here:
Even more suspiciously, the FBI also rejected a separate FOIA request filed by The Federalist which asked to see any emails sent or received from Josh Campbell on the day of the Stone raid. Campbell was formerly employed by the FBI under disgraced former director James Comey before becoming a law enforcement analyst for CNN. The FBI refused this request as well.
The Federalist claims that the FBI refused to list why their requests were not FOIA compliant. The Office of Inspector General, tasked by the Department of Justice with overseeing the FBI, has blasted the law enforcement bureau for its culture of corruption and leaking.
“We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review,” the inspector general wrote in a report blasting the FBI. “We identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters.”
“We do not believe the problem is with the FBI’s policy, which we found to be clear and unambiguous,” the report noted. “Rather, we concluded that these leaks highlight the need to change what appears to be a cultural attitude among many in the organization.”
The FBI’s close relationship with the corporate media is well-established, and a dangerous precedent of collusion may have been set with the raid on Stone. The idea proposed by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for a new special counsel to investigate the investigators may be the only mechanism to get the FBI back in line.
Share: