Roger Stone was not pleased to learn Tuesday that CNN has won an award for its coverage of the predawn raid of his home and arrest from the White House Correspondents Association.
Stone, President Trump’s convicted former campaign adviser, ripped both CNN and the WHCA in a series of social media postings for the network receiving accolades for its reporting.
He erupted on Instagram after CNN’s coverage of his arrest resulted in the network winning an annual award given by the group of White House reporters for breaking broadcast news.
Posting from his account on the platform, Stone called the WHCA the “fake news society” and “a bunch of elitist jerks who have no interest whatsoever in reporting facts or truth.”
He also alleged that CNN was illegally leaked details about the raid before it happened and therefore committed a crime by reporting on it.
“The White House correspondents association is giving CNN an award for their coverage of the Gestapo style raid on my home by the FBI,” Stone posted. “Since the leaking of the governments plan to execute a search warrant for my home which was executed at the same time as the warrant for my arrest is a felony, CNN is being awarded for criminal activity.”
“The idea that CNN arrived at my home 14 minutes before the FBI came to arrest me for fabricated process crimes based on a ’journalistic hunch’ is total bulls—t,” he said in another post.
The WHCA declined to comment on Stone’s remarks, and CNN did not immediately return a message seeking its reaction.
Stone, who briefly served on Mr. Trump’s presidential election campaign, was arrested by FBI agents at his Florida home on the morning of January 25, 2019, and charged with seven counts of obstruction, perjury and witness tampering related to the government’s investigation into Russian involvement in the race. He was later found guilty of all counts and sentenced to spend more than three years in federal prison, and he recently said he intends to start serving his sentence later this month.
CNN had a crew near Stone’s residence when the raid unfolded and was the first and only network to capture the longtime Republican strategist being hauled away from his home. The WHCA announced earlier Tuesday that it had accordingly won the network this year’s Merriman Smith Memorial Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline for Broadcast.
“CNN’s viewers saw the raid unfold in real time, the product of a team or reporters, producers and photojournalists tracking the investigation over months, connecting the dots and scooping the rest of the press corps,” the judges who determined this year’s recipient of the award said in a statement.
Stone, 67, has long maintained that CNN was leaked information about his arrest before it happened, reiterating to The Washington Times in an email sent after this article was originally published that he believes the network received an “illegal tip” that resulted in the TV crew being outside him home before his “over the top” arrest occurred.
The federal judge who oversaw Stone’s criminal case has previously ruled that no evidence has been offered in court to substantiate that claim.
“The whole Russia team thought maybe something was happening,” CNN producer David Shortell previously said about being outside Stone’s home at the time of his arrest, adding that there had been “some unusual grand jury activity” hours earlier and “other signs” of movement.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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