This archive report was first published on 20 June 2020.
On June 20, 2020, the Justice Department released more details from the Mueller report, shedding light on Donald Trump's interest in emails damaging to Hillary Clinton.
According to the report, Trump responded positively to Roger Stone's claims about WikiLeaks, saying 'Oh good, all right' after Stone promised that WikiLeaks would release more damaging information about Clinton.
When WikiLeaks later publicized documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee, Trump told his aide Michael Cohen, 'I guess Roger was right.'
The prosecutors noted that Trump's public comments about Stone and other witnesses and targets were an obvious signal, communicating a message that witnesses could be rewarded for refusing to provide testimony adverse to the president and disparaged if they chose to cooperate.
However, the Justice Department had withheld passages dealing with Stone in order to protect the ongoing criminal case against him. But the lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the BuzzFeed News journalist Jason Leopold challenged those and other redactions as violations of the Freedom of Information Act.
John Davisson, a lawyer for the privacy group, acknowledged that much of the newly disclosed information had come out after the Mueller report was released, but argued that the delay was still harmful.
House Democrats have been separately seeking to review grand jury materials cited in the report, but the Supreme Court blocked the release of that material in May 2020.
