WASHINGTON — Federal investigators probing Roger Stone, the former Trump campaign official indicted last week in the Russia probe, have obtained years of communication records from his cellphones and email accounts, the special counsel's office said Thursday.
Robert Mueller's prosecutors, in a new court filing, described the evidence as "voluminous and complex" in asking a judge to delay his trial to give them more time to sift through what was described as "terrabytes" of information, which Mueller's office has placed on hard drives.
The court papers said investigators were prepared to turn over material to Stone that included "FBI case reports, search warrant applications and results (e.g., Apple iCloud accounts and email accounts), bank and financial records, and the contents of numerous physical devices (e.g., cellular phones, computers, and hard drives)."
Mueller's team said he also intends to produce to the defense "the contents of physical devices recently seized from (Stone's) home, apartment, and office."
That material is undergoing what the FBI calls a "filter review" of the material, setting aside any evidence that cannot be admissible in court because it is considered privileged.
During a press conference Thursday, Stone agreed that evidence is voluminous and complex, and said both parties had agreed to the language in the government's filing.
Stone, 66, was arrested in a pre-dawn raid Friday at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a day after a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia indicted him on one count of "obstruction of proceeding," five counts of making false statements and one count of witness tampering.
A longtime Republican operative and self-described "dirty trickster," Stone has been under the microscope over his alleged connection to WikiLeaks and hacked Democratic emails released by the site during the 2016 presidential campaign. He has repeatedly denied any collusion with WikiLeaks.
Prosecutors argued for the delay under a federal statute that allows the constitutional right to a speedy trial to be waived when a case is "so unusual or so complex ... that it is unreasonable to expect adequate preparation for pretrial proceedings or for the trial itself within the time limits established."
