Q&A of the day – Was CNN tipped off to the Roger Stone raid in Ft. Lauderdale? Part 1
It’s the Q&A of the day. Each day I’ll feature a listener question that’s been submitted by one of these methods.
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Today’s note comes from Alex:
A topic can be the “Stone” arrest at his home with a swat team raiding his home at 6 am and CNN actually there before swat got there? And if he was such a dangerous person how can CNN be allowed to be so close when it happened? Funny how CNN could have been there so fast how about the way that when Mueller targets a Trump figure , he’ll cleverly begin a process of shutting down that their financial means to dry them up financially while they prep their case just in time to make the arrest and by that time they get flipped (because) can’t afford defense It’s the same formula used on Cohen, Flynn and now Stone.
Bottom Line: This is the question that the president himself advanced when he Tweeted: - Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country! NO COLLUSION! Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers are treated better. Who alerted CNN to be there?
So, what’s real and what isn’t? Was CNN really tipped off by the FBI or by Robert Muller himself in a made for TV CNN exclusive? I’ll break it down. Here are the facts:
CNN was the only news organization on site and had been staked out at approximately 5am Friday morning – an hour before the raid
CNN’s explanation was that they were following developments with Muller’s grand jury on Thursday and that previously there’d been an indictment the morning after the gathering of Muller’s grand jury
Was it a case of great instincts, as CNN alleges, or a tip – which would be illegal - as many suspect? Interestingly, at 3:32 Thursday afternoon CNN posted this story to CNN.com: As Stone waits for Mueller, he's back to going out for pizza on Fridays. The story is all about the likelihood that Stone would be indicted but it was just a matter of time. The story included a quote from Stone’s lead attorney saying that it’d been quiet, with no recent contact from the Muller team, consistent with what we heard from Stone himself on Friday after the indictment. So, what to make of this?
Hindsight is 20-20 right? Therefore, to me the question is whether we could walk backwards with publicly known information and reasonably end up in the same place at the same time that CNN did. The answer is yes. The key detail, if you’ve dedicated your life/network to following the Muller probe as arguably CNN has for nearly two years, happened on September 7th. That’s when former Infowars D.C. Bureau Chief Jerome Corsi was subpoenaed by Mueller’s team over connections to Wikileaks. This was widely reported and known with Corsi himself stating that he’d been offered a plea deal by Muller related to providing information about Roger Stone, who’d pun intended, stonewalled team Muller on his role in releasing Wikileaks emails exposing key Democrats during the 2016 cycle.
It’s fair to apply the legal standard of reasonable doubt to CNN’s situation. The answer is there’s absolutely enough here to suggest there’s reasonable doubt that CNN, who’s been completely invested in all things Muller related, put the pieces together. Sure, it’s possible they received a tip but there’s no evidence that’s the case. There is evidence they could have been at Stone’s house on Friday through publicly available information.