CNN wins journalism award for controversial coverage of FBI raid and arrest of Roger Stone in 2019​

CNN is celebrating an award it received over the controversial 2019 filming of the FBI raid and arrest of Roger Stone, one of President Donald Trump's longtime friends and campaign associates.

The award for journalism was given to CNN by the White House Correspondents' Association on Tuesday.

"CNN's reporting on the Roger Stone arrest began a month earlier, with a clue about a court scheduling anomaly. Then came unusual grand jury activity. Then an odd, packed suitcase wheeled by one of the prosecutors in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Stone," the WHCA judges said of the report.

"It culminated early in the morning of Jan. 25, 2019, when a CNN producer and a photojournalist, staked outside of Stone's home in Ft. Lauderdale, captured the 5 a.m., no-knock raid by the FBI of the former confidant of President Donald Trump," the judges added.

The controversy

Some on social media questioned whether CNN merited praise over the reporting after speculation that the network was tipped off about the arrest, ostensibly by someone within the government trying to damage the president.

The president himself fed those theories when he tweeted about it in January 2019.

"Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country! NO COLLUSION! Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers are treated better. Who alerted CNN to be there?" he tweeted.

A CNN producer denied the allegations and explained that it was merely a reporter's "instinct" based on unusual activity reported from a grand jury in Washington, D.C., before the arrest.

In an outraged statement in February, Stone repeated the allegations against CNN without evidence.

He was later convicted and sentenced to more than three years in prison over charges arising from the Mueller investigation into Russian election interference and alleged collusion.

Here's more about the Stone raid:

Donald Trump ally Roger Stone insists he's done nothing wrongwww.youtube.com