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Info on Mueller report's size and scope released by judge

Posted at 5:12 PM, Jun 24, 2019
and last updated 2019-06-24 20:12:02-04

At the request of CNN , a federal judge in Washington on Monday released about 230 pages of data from the court showing new details about the scope and speed of Robert Mueller's investigation.

The pages largely show limited new details about Mueller's work, such as the redacted case names and dates for his 499 search warrants and 200 communications data requests. Mueller began getting permission for searches in early July 2017, not even two months following his appointment as special counsel, the documents show.

His office did the bulk of its searches throughout 2018, conducting only a few searches this year, when the investigation was wrapping up.

Ultimately, Mueller was asking the court for access to thousands of devices and records in a grand jury investigation, according to the documents released by DC District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell. The documents now may act as a rough road map of how Mueller conducted his investigation.

Almost all of the hundreds of search and seizure cases revealed Monday are still under seal. Yet the lists still confirm that Mueller and the FBI gave extensive information about the special counsel's work to the court system -- and particularly to Howell. Names and addresses are either redacted or not used throughout the lists -- with redactions made because of ongoing investigations, the Justice Department said.

The 13 requests Mueller's team made to foreign governments for assistance in its investigation are not included in the lists, because they were not processed through the US federal courts.

He sought emails and account data from across the web -- LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Apple and Skype, with some of the searches targeting dozens of social media accounts. Mueller in 2018 indicted Russians for spreading propaganda online to American voters largely through Facebook and Twitter, and that case appears to relate to at least some of the searches.

Paul Manafort's case also appears to relate to other court applications revealed Monday, like Mueller's seizure of funds in banks named in the Manafort matter in October 2017.

Other cases revealed in the lists on Monday raise new questions about the investigation.

For instance, at one point in August 2017, Mueller obtained a warrant to look at emails maintained by the FBI, according to the documents.

Some of Mueller's searches from early 2017 pertain to a case or cases that weren't closed April 1, 2019 -- after Mueller finished his report.