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The Guardian

Roger Stone, a key ally of US President Donald Trump, says he believes his arrest in the special counsel’s Russia probe was “politically motivated” and he is vowing to plead not guilty and fight the charges.
Stone has been arrested on charges of obstruction, witness tampering and making false statements, the office of special counsel Robert Mueller announced on Friday.
The indictment alleges that Stone made multiple attempts to contact WikiLeaks through an intermediary about documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee and passed on information to Trump’s election campaign team about the leaked documents.
Stone was arrested in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after an indictment on Thursday by a federal grand jury in Washington, said a spokesman for Mueller, who is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election and any ties to the Trump campaign.


Stone was released on US$250,000 bond after a court appearance on Friday, and he will contest the charges “vigorously”, his lawyer Grant Smith said.
“There was no collusion. He forgot to tell something to Congress and what it was was immaterial,” Smith said.
Stone said he would plead not guilty and added that he believed he was being “persecuted” because of his friendship with Trump.
Stone spoke to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on his InfoWars radio show after his arrest. He did not provide any details to support his accusation that he was being persecuted and that these were “politically motivated charges”.
Trump said after Stone’s arrest that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign is the “greatest witch hunt in the history of our country! No collusion!”

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

Mueller’s indictment alleges that during the summer of 2016 Stone spoke to senior Trump campaign officials about WikiLeaks “and information it might have had that would be damaging to the Clinton campaign”.
“Stone was contacted by senior Trump campaign officials to inquire about future releases by” WikiLeaks, which the document refers to as “Organisation 1”.
It states that Stone – a long-time political adviser to Trump – made “multiple false statements” about his interactions regarding WikiLeaks.
It says he also “falsely denied possessing records that contained evidence of these interactions”, and “attempted to persuade a witness to provide false testimony to and withhold pertinent information from the investigations”.

The document later states that on or about October 4, 2016, the head of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, “held a press conference but did not release any new materials pertaining to the Clinton campaign.
Soon afterward, Stone received an email from the high-ranking Trump campaign official asking about the status of future releases by [WikiLeaks].
Stone answered that the head of [WikiLeaks] had a “[s]erious security concern” but that [WikiLeaks] would release ‘a load every week going forward’.”
Jerome Corsi, an associate of Trump ally Roger Stone, says he is in plea talks with Robert Mueller’s team
On or about October 7, 2016, the indictment states, WikiLeaks “released the first set of emails stolen from the Clinton campaign chairman [John Podesta]”.
“Soon after [WikiLeaks’] release, an associate of [a] high-ranking Trump campaign official sent a text message to Stone that read ‘well done’. In subsequent conversations with senior Trump campaign officials, Stone claimed credit for having correctly predicted the October 7, 2016 release.”
Although Stone did not hold an official position for much of Trump’s 2016 campaign, he is perhaps the president’s longest-serving informal political adviser, stemming from a close association in New York spanning more than a decade.
It was Stone who first recommended that Trump’s team hire as its campaign manager Paul Manafort, who has been found guilty on eight counts of financial crimes and is said to have breached a plea agreement with the special counsel.

Manafort made his first court appearance in months on Friday as prosecutors and defence lawyers argued over whether he intentionally lied to investigators.
Lawyers with Mueller’s office say Manafort breached his plea deal by repeatedly making false statements after he began cooperating with them in September.
Manafort’s lawyers say that he simply had an inconsistent recollection of facts and events from several years ago, and that he suffers from depression and anxiety and had little time to prepare for questioning on the days he met with investigators.
Manafort, who is locked up in Virginia as he awaits sentencing, had asked to skip Friday’s appearance in federal court in Washington. But Judge Amy Berman Jackson denied the request, saying he’d already been excused from several court dates.
Additional reporting by Associated Press


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US Politics

Donald Trump’s associate Roger Stone vows to plead not guilty, says his arrest is ‘politically motivated’

Roger Stone leaves the federal courthouse on Friday in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Photo: Getty Images/AFP

FILE PHOTO: U.S. political consultant Roger Stone speaks to reporters after appearing before a closed House Intelligence Committee hearing investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., September 26, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Political operative Roger Stone speaks at the American Priority conference in Washington D.C., U.S., December 6, 2018. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart/File Photo

Donald Trump’s confidant Roger Stone claims he was poisoned with polonium in conspiracy to frame Russia

Roger Stone: ‘Just a theory. The Deep State moves in strange ways.’

(FILES) A handout image released 20 November 2006, shows former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in his bed at the University College Hospital, in central London. Russia stood accused Friday 24 November 2006 of being behind the death of former spy Alexander Litvinenko, who lost his three-week fight for life in a London hospital after an apparent Soviet-style poisoning. But the charge has been repeatedly dismissed by Moscow and with few details from police, who are investigating the death as "unexplained", and contradictory facts from doctors, exactly how he died remains a mystery. AFP PHOTO/NO SALES/EDITORIAL USE ONLY

Longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone continues to claim he was poisoned with Polonium. “I was extraordinarily ill,” Stone told CNN's Anderson Cooper, before referring to pictures of his face during the period. You can see in the file footage that you used at the beginning of the segment that I still have lesions on my face from that illness.

Former Russian military intelligence colonel Sergei Skripal attends a hearing at the Moscow District Military Court in Moscow on August 9, 2006. Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent whose mysterious collapse in England sparked concerns of a possible poisoning by Moscow, has been living in Britain since a high-profile spy swap in 2010. Police were probing his exposure to an unknown substance, which left him unconscious on a bench in the city of Salisbury and saw media draw parallels to the case of Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-spy who died of radioactive polonium poisoning in 2006. / AFP PHOTO / Kommersant Photo / Yuri SENATOROV / Russia OUT

Trump confidant Roger Stone can’t stop claiming he was poisoned by polonium. File photo: AP

In email to Trump’s campaign strategist Bannon, Roger Stone implied he knew of WikiLeaks’ plans for hacked Clinton data

Roger Stone, pictured in 2014 at his office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is a veteran Republican political operative. Photo: TNS

Roger Stone, seen here in 2017, is a longtime GOP operative. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Andrew Harrer

Steve Bannon, former chairman of Breitbart News Network LLC and former Trump political strategist, gestures as he speaks during an interview at the Bloomberg Invest London event at Bloomberg's European headquarters in London, U.K., on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2018. With the help of strategists including Bannon, who helped upend the U.S. political order before falling out with U.S. President Donald Trump, European populists are discussing ways to gain a bigger foothold for their policies ahead of the election. Photographer: Luke MacGregor/Bloomberg

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Stone faces one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of making false statements and one count of witness tampering


Stone faces one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of making false statements and one count of witness tampering.
