Mueller Investigation Roger Stone arrested in Mueller investigation The White House insists the charges of lying to congressional investigators and witness tampering 'don’t have anything to do with the president.'

Roger Stone, a longtime aide and confidant of President Donald Trump, was arrested early Friday morning by the FBI after being indicted on charges he lied to Congress and obstructed the House Intelligence Committee's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The seven-count indictment alleges Stone misled lawmakers on the committee about his efforts to communicate with WikiLeaks and his contacts with the Trump campaign. It also accuses Stone of attempting to intimidate another witness: radio host Randy Credico, who was in contact with WikiLeaks head Julian Assange in 2016.


Stone appeared Friday morning at the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., after a Washington, D.C., grand jury approved the indictment Thursday. He was released on a $250,000 personal surety bond and is scheduled to be arraigned at 11 a.m. next Tuesday in D.C.

The Stone indictment marks Mueller’s biggest move yet against a Trump associate on grounds related to the release of stolen emails to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. It also reflects a stunning turn for Stone, a GOP operative and prominent Trump cheerleader whose relationship with the president spans nearly 40 years, making him a prime target for investigators to try to turn into a government witness.

After he was released, Stone phoned into conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ show on InfoWars, where he vowed to fight the charges and said that he wouldn’t flip on the president.

“There are no circumstance under which I would plead guilty to these charges. There are no circumstances under which I would bear false witness against the president,” he said. He pleaded with supporters to donate to his legal defense fund, accusing Mueller and his investigators of “seek[ing] to destroy me” and claiming that because of the accusations against him, he was living paycheck to paycheck.

He said he would “fight for his life” against the charges, which he contended were “bogus” and politically motivated.

“I believed I would be framed by some process charge,” he said, declaring that nothing in the indictment proved that there was collusion with Russia or collaboration with WikiLeaks, or that Stone did anything illegal to help Trump get elected.

“I’m being persecuted for being 40-year friend and supporter of his,” Stone said.

Mueller’s 24-page indictment against Stone is replete with examples of alleged lies he told, some of them rather brazen. It contends that around Stone’s late September 2017 testimony before the House committee, he “denied having ever sent or received emails or text messages” from Credico when in fact they’d “exchanged over thirty text messages.”

But perhaps the most politically damning and intriguing parts of the indictment are new details about alleged efforts by the Trump campaign and Trump backers to keep abreast of potential new disclosures from WikiLeaks, referred to as "Organization 1" in the document.

“After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, 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,” the indictment says. “STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1.”

The indictment does not identify the senior campaign official nor does it specify who instructed the official to maintain contact with Stone about WikiLeaks. While it’s unclear just who that official is — Justice Department policy is not to name individuals in indictments unless they have been charged — some other exchanges with Stone clearly involved Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who became the campaign’s chief executive in mid-August 2016.

In one early October email, Stone told Bannon that WikiLeaks would release "a load every week going forward." The message was previously published in the New York Times. An attorney for Bannon declined to comment.

The indictment also says that as the campaign unfolded, Stone was keeping key Trump backers apprised of indications about what WikiLeaks and Assange were up to. “Spoke to my friend in London last night. The payload is still coming,” Stone allegedly assured one Trump campaign-linked supporter by email on October 3, 2016, just four days before WikiLeaks dropped its first batch of internal Clinton campaign emails.

Stone then spoke by phone with the same supporter the following day to say that the upcoming release "would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign."

Stone, who is based in South Florida, has long been known for his work in the political “dark arts.” He was one of the youngest members of Richard Nixon’s infamous 1972 reelection bid, which launched the Watergate scandal. Stone has also been one of the most outspoken advocates to have urged Trump to make the jump from business into presidential politics — starting in 1988 and then again in 2000 and 2012, before Trump finally took the plunge on his way to a White House upset in 2016.

In a combative live interview with CNN on Friday morning, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she was unaware that anyone at the White House got a heads up about Stone’s impending arrest. She also distanced the president from Stone's charges while repeatedly declining to answer whether Trump directed an aide to contact Stone about his Wikileaks contacts, saying she hadn’t read the indictment.

Trump's personal attorney, Jay Sekulow, said in a statement, “The indictment today does not allege Russian collusion by Roger Stone or anyone else. Rather, the indictment focuses on alleged false statements Mr. Stone made to Congress.”

Stone's witness tampering charge does accuse the operative of attempting to interfere in the FBI's Russia probe.

Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani claimed that with the indictment, it "seems like we are coming to an end.” But Mueller is under no deadline to finish his investigation and his now 20-month-old investigation could extend for several months, if not more, as Stone fights back against the charges in court.

Trump himself weighed in late Friday morning with a familiar refrain. “Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country! NO COLLUSION!” he tweeted.

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

Stone was greeted by a zoo-like atmosphere when he appeared in court Friday morning. Inside the packed federal courtroom, the famously fashion-conscious political operative, dressed in a navy blue collared shirt, was told he could not travel outside the Southern District of Florida, Eastern District of Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Outside the courthouse, media clustered around the entrance, and protesters sang "Back in the USSR."

Stone, on the phone with Jones, even remarked about the mayhem outside.

“You wouldn’t believe the scene I’m looking at outside, there must be 500 to 600 reporters,” he said.

In his news conference Friday, Stone quipped about the attention his arrest had received, telling a booing crowd that “as I have always said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

Stone incorrectly contended that he was only being charged with lying to Congress. "Any error I made in my testimony would be both immaterial and without intent," he said, though he admitted he hadn’t read the indictment. He also slammed the special counsel’s office again for his surprise arrest.

“Since I was not contacted prior to the charges today, my lawyers have not talked to the special prosecutors,” he said, responding to whether or not he will cooperate with Mueller. “I don't want to address that question, but I have made it clear I will not testify against the president. Because I would have to bear false witness against him.”

He added: “I have told the truth. I will continue to tell the truth and I will tell that to a court of law. I am one of his oldest friends.”

But Stone again denied that he had assisted in Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election, and he also denied that anyone in the Trump campaign had asked him to contact WikiLeaks.

“Categorically not, no. Absolutely not,” he said.

Back in Washington, Stone’s case was assigned to Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an appointee of President Barack Obama who ordered Stone’s former business partner Paul Manafort to jail last June on charges of witness tampering. Jackson apparently picked up the Stone case because she was previously assigned to a criminal indictment Mueller’s office returned last July against Russian intelligence operatives accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election. A note on a filing in the new case declared the two cases to be related.

Federal investigators have long had Stone in their sights.

The Republican operative communicated throughout 2016 with the Russian hackers responsible for stealing Democratic documents that forced Clinton on the defensive, according to a July indictment of 12 Russian military officials over the hacks.

He also was in touch during the 2016 campaign with Assange, whose transparency activist group WikiLeaks published the pilfered emails that made significant political waves and gained unprecedented media attention during the tumultuous general election campaign.

A recently filed court document accidentally revealed potential charges against Assange, although it’s unclear whether those charges would relate to WikiLeaks’ role in the 2016 election. Barry Pollack, a Washington-based attorney for Assange, said in a statement Friday that Mueller’s office has never spoken to his client, who remains in the dark about any potential indictment.

Stone's legal troubles center around his September 2017 closed-door testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. Democrats started suggesting that Stone may have lied to the committee as reports emerged about Stone's more extensive efforts to reach Assange through intermediaries as well as his contacts with Guccifer 2.0 — a Twitter persona that the special counsel has attributed to Russian intelligence.

Indeed, Mueller hit Stone with a false-statement charge on Friday for telling the House committee that he never discussed information he received from Credico with officials from the Trump campaign.

Mueller also contends that Stone leaned on Credico to deny their interactions during the campaign. The indictment says Stone repeatedly told Credico to “do a ‘Frank Petrangeli,’” a reference to a character in “The Godfather: Part II” who gave false denials to a congressional committee.

Stone peppered Credico with intimidating texts, according to the court document, including “If you turned over anything to the FBI, you’re a fool,” and “I’m not talking to the FBI and if your [sic] smart you won’t either.”

Conversely, the indictment says Credico urged Stone to revise his testimony, telling him in a message, "You should be honest w fbi.”

Stone allegedly reacted angrily to the advice, calling Credico “a rat” and “a stoolie” and telling him in an April 2018 email: “Prepare to die [expletive].”

Ultimately, at Stone's urging, Credico invoked his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to testify before the House committee.

A CNN camera captured the moment federal agents arrived at Stone’s South Florida home before sunrise Friday. “FBI. Open the door,” one agent can be heard shouting.

In a phone interview, Stone’s lawyer took issue with the pre-dawn arrest. “It’s absolutely a travesty of justice that they went to his house without informing us because, I’m not sure, but I’m fairly certain they’ve never arrested somebody out of a deep sleep for lying to Congress,” the attorney, Grant Smith, said.

The president also complained about the manner of Stone’s arrest, writing on Twitter that “Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers are treated better” and asking “who alerted CNN to be there?”

Some of the president’s allies have suggested the FBI tipped off the network. But the network said a decision was made to stake out Stone’s house after unusual grand jury activity in Washington on Thursday.

Another Stone associate quipped about the show of force: “Helmets and flack vests, really, were they afraid Roger would hurl martini glasses at them?” said Peter Flaherty, the chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit that’s been paying for a legal challenge from a Stone associate trying to get Mueller ousted from his job on constitutional grounds.

But Stone said Friday he didn’t have any objections to how he was treated in custody, telling Jones that the agents who arrested him, who are likely going unpaid due to the ongoing government shutdown, treated him "very well" and were "very courteous."

He did object to the early morning wake-up call, which he sad “scared the daylights” out of his wife and dogs.

In a court filing Thursday unsealed after Stone’s indictment went public, Mueller argued that he wanted to keep the charges under wraps until the arrest because of a concern that publicizing the new case “will increase the risk of the defendant fleeing and destroying (or tampering with) evidence.”

Trump and Stone first met in 1979 through Roy Cohn, the former chief counsel to anti-communist Sen. Joseph McCarthy. By 1988, Stone was considered one of Trump’s closest political advisers and helped arrange for the New York businessman to travel to New Hampshire as he considered a White House campaign that ultimately never materialized.

“The best one he’s ever had for years and years,” said Charlie Black, a former Stone business partner along with Manafort. “I doubt there’s many weeks in the last 30 years they haven’t talked.”

Stone did consulting work for Trump at the start of his 2016 presidential bid, though they officially split ways (with differing accounts of who fired whom) in August 2015. Despite the breakup, Stone remained an informal adviser and vocal Trump backer. He launched a super PAC, the Committee to Restore America’s Greatness, that spent nearly $587,000 on Trump’s behalf. He also paid for a 55-foot digital billboard, displayed in Times Square, depicting Trump as Superman.

As the campaign heated up, Stone pugnaciously promoted WikiLeaks and the hacked Democratic emails.

On Aug. 5, 2016, he published an op-ed in Breitbart — which at the time was still run by Bannon, who’d go on to become Trump’s campaign chief executive after Manafort — calling the Democratic hacker Guccifer 2.0 the “real deal” and arguing that the internet persona wasn’t Russian. U.S. officials would later determine with “high confidence” that Russian military intelligence had indeed used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release the documents stolen from Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

Also that August, Stone wrote on Twitter that Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, would soon have his “time in the barrel.” Stone later said the social media post was a reference to Podesta’s being embarrassed by an upcoming release of documents known as the Panama Papers. But his comment was also seen at the time as evidence that he was familiar with the hacking of Podesta’s Gmail account and messages that WikiLeaks would feature on its site in October.

Podesta on Friday reveled in Stone's indictment. "Rogers’s time in the barrel—and it’s headed over Niagara Falls," he tweeted.

Neera Tanden, another longtime Clinton adviser targeted in the campaign document dumps, also took aim at Stone. “I was a victim of Wikileaks psyops. And I have waited for this day a very long time. Justice is beautiful. #rogerstoneindictment” she wrote.

Media reporting has shown Stone was in touch with Guccifer 2.0 between Aug. 14 and Sept. 8, 2016, starting with a message from Stone saying he was “delighted” that the persona’s Twitter account had been reinstated. He also urged Guccifer 2.0 to promote a column he’d written.

“I’m pleased to say that u r great man. Please tell me if I can help u anyhow. It would be a great pleasure to me,” Guccifer 2.0 replied, according to messages Stone made public in March 2017 after the conversations were first reported by the website Smoking Gun.

Stone and WikiLeaks also exchanged private messages during the 2016 general election and after Trump’s upset win. According to a report in The Atlantic published in 2018, Stone wrote the group in mid-October of the Clinton-Trump campaign to say: “Since I was all over national TV, cable and print defending wikileaks and Assange against the claim that you are Russian agents and debunking the false charges of sexual assault as trumped up bs you may want to examine the strategy of attacking me — cordially R.”

WikiLeaks responded: “We appreciate that. however, the false claims of association are being used by the democrats to undermine the impact of our publications. Don’t go there if you don’t want us to correct you.”

“Ha!” Stone replied on Oct. 15. “The more you ‘correct’ me the more people think you’re lying. Your operation leaks like a sieve. You need to figure out who your friends are.”

WikiLeaks next messaged Stone on Nov. 9, a day after Trump’s victory: “Happy? We are now more free to communicate.”

Stone has repeatedly denied his communications from the 2016 campaign. Writing on his blog in March 2017, he said the exchanges with Guccifer 2.0 were “so perfunctory, brief and banal I had forgotten it. Not exactly 007 stuff even if Guccifer 2.0 was working for the Russkies.”

He also insisted his communications with Assange had never been direct but were made through Credico, a New York-based political satirist and radio host who had interviewed Assange in person at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has taken refuge.

Several of Stone’s associates say he may have landed himself in legal trouble in part because he has said so many different things about his communications with Assange and the Russian hackers.

“What the special counsel has in Roger Stone is a showman, someone who for 40 years has been upsetting the applecart in the political arena, punking Democrats and exposing the media,” said Michael Caputo, who has known Stone and worked with him for three decades. “None of that is illegal.”

“There’s certainly been some inconsistencies in stories he’s told over a two-year period,” Black, the former Stone lobbying partner, added in a recent interview. “I think Roger has talked himself into a problem here.”

Black and others have predicted Stone would revel in being a defendant if Mueller did pull the trigger with an indictment.

“He’d have the time of his life,” Black said. “Roger likes to be the center of attention.”

At the end of Stone’s news conference in South Florida, he ascended the steps of the courthouse to escape a scrum of camera-wielding media, with jeering detractors and supporters calling out his name. Stone briefly paused, cracked a wry smile and held up his two arms and flashed double Vs with his index and middle fingers in the fashion of his old idol Richard Nixon, whose likeness is also tattooed on his back.

Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.