CNN – “Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors didn’t want former FBI Director James Comey’s memos released because they feared that President Donald Trump and other witnesses could change their stories after reading Comey’s version of events, according to an argument they made in a January 2018 sealed court hearing. The newly released record gives a rare glimpse into the Mueller team’s concerns at a time the special prosecutors were publicly silent about their work — and before redacted versions of Comey’s memos were made public.

A court order on Tuesday forced the Justice Department to provide a transcript of the hearing to CNN as part of a lawsuit over access to the Comey memos. The Justice Department implored a federal judge to keep the memos under seal after CNN and other news organizations asked for their release. Mueller’s plea to keep the memos under seal coincided with negotiations with Trump’s legal team over a potential interview with the President at Camp David, planned for the days following the court hearing and which ultimately fell through. At the time of the late January hearing, several other witnesses to the Comey developments had already spoken to Mueller…”