Trump ally Roger Stone arrested following Muller probe indictment
Trump ally Roger Stone arrested by Federal agents with GUNS DRAWN shouting ‘FBI! Open the door!’ in dramatic pre-dawn raid following indictment in Mueller’s Russia probe on seven counts related to Wikileaks hack of Democrats’ emails during 2016 election
- Roger Stone, a former longtime confidant of President Donald Trump, arrested in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
- Facing seven charges including making false statements and witness tampering
- He is due to make his first court appearance later on Friday, as Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is also set to appear in court in Virginia
- Stone has long been thought central to the investigation, but bragged as
- He told DailyMail.com on January 4:
- recently as this month that he didn’t expect to be indicted: ‘They’ve tried hard, but I didn’t do anything illegal. That’s why I’m not worried’
Roger Stone, a former longtime confidant of President Donald Trump, was arrested in Florida on Friday morning following a federal indictment resulting from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s sprawling probe into Russian election meddling.
FBI agents armed with rifles took the self-decsribed political dirty trickster into custody in a dramatic pre-dawn raid with their weapons drawn and a lead agent shouting ‘FBI! Open the door! We have a warrant!’
Stone is charged with seven federal counts including five of making false statements, one of witness tampering and one of obstruction of official proceedings.
Stone is due to appear at the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale on Friday morning, according to Mueller’s office.
The indictment does not charge him with crimes directly related to Russia or with conspiracy to skew the 2016 election, but with what legal experts call ‘process crimes’ – lying to investigators and trying to tamper with their work.
Roger Stone, a former longtime close confidant of Donald Trump, was arrested Friday morning in Fort Lauderdale on seven charges including witness tampering as part of the Russia probe
CNN aired dramatic video o nFriday morning that showed the pre-dawn raid that resulted in Stone’s arrest
Agents wearing body armor and drawing their weapons swarmed Stone’s home in a posh south Florida neighborhood
Stone, whose political pedigree dates back to the Nixon administration, is accused of feeding information from Wikileaks about the DNC email hack to the Trump campaign during the 2016 election
As Stone makes his court appearance another Trump ally – former campaign chairman Paul Manafort – will also be appearing in a Virginia courtroom.
Manafort, who has already been jailed for conspiracy, is facing new allegations that he lied to members of Mueller’s team while cooperating as part of his plea deal.
Stone, a former Nixon campaign adviser who has the disgraced former president’s face permanently tattooed on his back, has long been portrayed as a central figure in the election interference scandal, but as recently as January 4 told Dailymail.com that he doesn’t expect to be indicted.
‘They got nothing,’ he said of the special counsel’s investigation.
‘They’ve tried hard, but I didn’t do anything illegal. That’s why I’m not worried and I’ll do a public appearance like tonight’s without a problem.’
Mueller’s federal grand jury met on Thursday, a Justice Department source told DailyMail.com. That’s unusual, given the typical schedule of such grand juries. The Justice Department source said the grand jury also met on a Thursday the day before Mueller unsealed an indictment against a dozen Russian agents last July.
The indictment against Stone was unsealed Friday morning, just before he was arrested at his house
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The indictment says that during the summer of 2016 Stone spoke to senior Trump campaign officials about information held by Wikileaks that might by damaging to the Clintons.
The campaign official, thought to be then-future White House senior adviser Steve Bannon, replied to Stone asking him to inquire about potential future release by Wikileaks, the indictment alleges.
Messages sent Friday morning to Bannon and his public relations adviser Alexandra preate, who worked alongside him in the White House, went unanswered.
The indictment also indicates that Stone tasked another person, referred to as ‘Person 1,’ with contacting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for him.
Breitbart News Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle did not respond to emails on Friday morning seeking to learn if he is that person.
Stone is accused of making ‘multiple false statements’ about his contacts with Wikileaks, and wrongly denying having records of these conversations.
He is also accused of trying to persuade a witness ‘to provide false testimony to and withhold pertinent information from the investigations.’
The indictment accuses Stone of lying to a congressional panel in September 2017, telling House Intelligence Committee members that he had never asked an intermediary to contact Assange on his behalf.
‘I did not,’ he replied.
According to the indictment, he had by then asked two people to ‘get to’ Assange, forwarding a request for documents that could damage the Hillary Clinton campaign.
News reports have established that Stone sent similar emails to Jerome Corsi, a well-known conspiracy theorist whose relationship with Stone goes back decades.
Corsi said in November that he had declined a plea agreement from Mueller that would involve a guilty plea to lying about his discussions with Stone.
Robert Mueller’s team also accuse Stone of trying to hide evidence of his contact with Wikileaks from investigators and trying to convince a witness to lie
Stone will appear in court Friday as Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, also appears before a judge accused of lying to Mueller’s team while cooperating with the probe
Stone has accused Mueller of harassment after the counsel’s sleuths tracked down and interviewed 19 of his friends and business associates.
‘My cleaning lady had to go back to Cuba for a while, so I hired a temp,’ Stone said.
‘The temp spoke only Spanish. I never knew her name or anything. Yet, government agents found her in Miami. They asked her if I was meeting with Russians at home.
‘Now, how they found her when I didn’t even know her name, I can only guess. I know she had nothing to say to them.’
He claims agents showed some of Stone’s friends a photo of the two-year-old boy born to Kristin Davis, the infamous Manhattan Madam whose prostitution service was used by disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and, allegedly, the likes of retired baseball slugger Alex Rodriguez.
‘They kept asking if the baby was mine,’ the married Stone said. ‘What does that have to do with Russian collusion? The baby is not mine, I’m the godfather. But that’s an invasion of privacy if I’ve ever seen one.’
Being at the forefront of this political scandal has been ‘financially debilitating, to say the least,’ he says.
He’s been involved in a half dozen lawsuits that have resulted in up to $200,000 each in legal bills.
Preparing for his 2017 House testimony, when he was interviewed by the Intelligence Committee for four and half hours, also cost him $400,000, he said.
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