Roger Stone Indictment Gives Insight Into Interaction With Trump Campaign Over WikiLeaks Releases
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FT LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami/AP/CNN) - Roger Stone, a longtime associate of Donald Trump, was arrested early Friday morning when the FBI raided his Ft. Lauderdale home.
The seven-count indictment against Stone is the first criminal case in months from special counsel Robert Mueller.
It provides the most detail to date about how Trump campaign associates in the summer of 2016 were actively seeking to politically benefit from the WikiLeaks' release of hacked material damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign.
The indictment does not charge Stone with conspiring with WikiLeaks or with the Russian officers Mueller says hacked them. Instead, it accuses him of witness tampering, obstruction and false statements about his interactions related to WikiLeaks' release.
Some of those false statements were made to the House intelligence committee, prosecutors allege.
According to the indictment, which was unsealed on his arrest, a "Senior Trump campaign official" was "directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1."
Organization 1 is WikiLeaks, the website run by Julian Assange that was responsible for the posting/distribution of emails stolen as a result of a hack of the Democratic National Committee's servers and the account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. According to the US intelligence community, that hacking was conducted by the Russians for the express purpose of improving Trump's chances (and hurting Clinton's chances) in the 2016 election.
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On June 14, 2016, the Democratic National Committee, through a security company it had hired, publicly announced that it had been hacked by Russian government actors.
The first release of hacked emails came July 22, 2016 -- just before the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
Five days later, at a news conference, then-candidate Donald Trump said this: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press." (On that same day, according to filings from Mueller's office, the Russians began an effort to hack into Clinton's personal email server; it's not clear whether that move was long planned or spurred by Trump's comments.)
"Between on or about October 7, 2016 and on or about November 7, 2016, Organization 1 released approximately 33 tranches of documents that had been stolen from the personal email account of the Clinton Campaign chairman, totaling over 50,000 stolen documents," according to the indictment.
On August 16th, Stone said in an interview with Alex Jones that he had had some back-channel communications with WikiLeaks and Assange.
Two days later, he told CSPAN they communicated through a mutual friend.
Another Trump campaign official cited in the indictment is Steve Bannon, who later became Trump's chief strategist in the White House. Bannon, referred to as a "high-ranking Trump Campaign official," exchanged emails with Stone in October 2016 about WikiLeaks' plans for releasing hacked material. The indictment quotes from those emails, which had previously been made public by news outlets.
The indictment makes clear that Stone lied to investigators about both his advance knowledge of planned WikiLeaks releases and his contact with the Trump campaign regarding his relationship with WikiLeaks.
While the indictment provides some new insight into the Trump campaign, it also deals with what prosecutors say were Stone's false statements about his conversations with conservative writer and conspiracy theorist, Jerome Corsi, and New York radio host, Randy Credico. Corsi is referred to as Person 1 in the indictment, and Credico as Person 2.
The indictment accuses Stone of carrying out a "prolonged effort" to keep Credico from contradicting his testimony before the House intelligence committee. During that effort, prosecutors note that Stone repeatedly told Credico to "do a 'Frank Pentangeli,'" a reference to a character in "The Godfather: Part II" who lies before a congressional committee.
Stone is also accused of threatening Credico. The indictment cites several messages, some of which have already been public, that Stone sent to Credico last year. On April 9, Stone called Credico a "rat" and a "stoolie" and accused him of backstabbing his friends. Stone also threatened to "take that dog away from you," a reference to Credico's dog, Bianca.
"I am so ready. Let's get it on. Prepare to die (expletive)," Stone also wrote to Credico.
Friday morning White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Stone's arrest "has nothing to do with the President."
Friday morning, Trump tweeted out:
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?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2019
The CNN reference is over the network's exclusive footage of Stone's pre-dawn arrest.
Stone is someone with a long history with Trump, dating back to the 1970s when Trump mentor Roy Cohn introduced the two men. They stayed in touch throughout the intervening decades and occasionally worked on both business and political projects together.
When Trump announced his run for president, Stone was a senior adviser. He was fired two months later.|
Stone is the sixth Trump aide charged in Mueller's investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign and the 34th person overall. The investigation has laid bare multiple contacts between Trump associates and Russia during the campaign and transition period and efforts by several to conceal those communications.
(© Copyright 2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press and CNN contributed to this report.)
