Trump says 'nobody can even define' what Roger Stone did. Here are crimes Stone committed

Eugene Kiely | FactCheck

Show Caption Hide Caption Roger Stone: Prosecutors quit case against Donald Trump ally In a short period, the Justice Department changed their prison recommendation for Roger Stone while four attorneys abruptly quit the prosecution team.

President Donald Trump criticized the Justice Department for prosecuting his longtime associate Roger Stone and recommending that Stone serve up to nine years in prison. He claims Stone did “nothing” and “nobody even can define what he did,” but that's his opinion.

The Justice Department summed it up in November when the jury rendered its verdict: “Stone was found guilty of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and tampering with a witness.”

All of the charges stemmed from Stone’s attempts to thwart the House intelligence committee’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

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Trump: Stone treated ‘very badly’

On Feb. 10, the Department of Justice recommended a sentence ranging from 87 to 108 months, or roughly seven to nine years, saying, “Obstructing such critical investigations … strikes at the very heart of our American democracy.”

Trump objected on Twitter, and a day later, the department filed an updated sentencing recommendation memo that left the decision up to the judge – resulting in four federal prosecutors withdrawing from the case.

Trump praised Attorney General William Barr in a tweet Feb. 12 “for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought.” (Barr said Trump’s tweets make it “impossible for me to do my job.”)

Trump made numerous remarks to reporters and on Twitter about Stone’s case, saying his friend was treated “very badly” by prosecutors. When asked Feb. 12 whether he considered pardoning Stone, who is due to be sentenced Feb. 20, Trump responded, “I don’t want to say that yet. But I tell you what: People were hurt viciously and badly by these corrupt people.

“And I want to thank – if you look at what happened, I want to thank the Justice Department for seeing this horrible thing. And I didn’t speak to them, by the way, just so you understand. They saw the horribleness of a nine-year sentence for doing nothing. You have murderers and drugs addicts; they don’t get nine years. Nine years for doing something that nobody even can define what he did.”

Federal prosecutors, beginning with special counsel Robert Mueller, clearly defined what Stone did and how it interfered with the investigation of Russia’s election interference.

Mueller concluded in a report in March 2019, “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion” to help Trump win the election. The Russians did this in two ways, according to the Mueller report:

“First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working on the Clinton Campaign and then released stolen documents."

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Obstruction, witness tampering and lying

The federal investigation uncovered a sophisticated hacking operation by a unit responsible for intelligence collection for the Russian military. The Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, “hacked the computers and email accounts of organizations, employees, and volunteers supporting the Clinton Campaign,” the Mueller report says. The GRU gained access to more than 30 computers on the Democratic National Committee network and “stole hundreds of thousands of documents from the compromised email accounts and networks,” the report says.

The GRU publicly released the stolen emails and documents “through two fictitious online personas that it created – DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 – and later through the organization WikiLeaks,” the report says.

“The release of the documents was designed and timed to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election and undermine the Clinton Campaign,” the report says.

“According to [Deputy Campaign Chairman Rick] Gates, by the late summer of 2016, the Trump Campaign was planning a press strategy, a communications campaign, and messaging based on the possible release of Clinton emails by WikiLeaks,” the report says.

At Stone’s trial, Gates testified that in April 2016 Stone privately told him “WikiLeaks would be submitting or dropping information” that could help the Trump campaign. That was about three months before WikiLeaks released nearly 20,000 DNC emails – the first of document dumps that exceeded 44,000 emails and 17,000 attachments, as WikiLeaks says on its website.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign manager, testified that the campaign saw Stone as its potential “access point” to WikiLeaks.

On Oct. 3, 2016, Stone tweeted, “I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon.” Assange is WikiLeaks’ founder. That same day, Matthew Boyle, the Washington editor of Breitbart, sent Stone a text message that said, “Assange – what’s he got? Hope it’s good.” Stone replied, “It is. I’d tell Bannon but he doesn’t call me back.” Four days later, WikiLeaks released a batch of emails belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

The House intelligence committee tried to determine whether Stone had insider knowledge of WikiLeaks’ release of the emails and documents.

According to the sentencing memo Feb. 10, Stone made at least five public statements from Aug. 8 to 18, 2016, that indicated he had a source connected to Assange. The committee asked Stone to name the person. Stone told the House committee it was radio host Randy Credico, who interviewed Assange on Aug. 25, 2016.

That was a lie, according to the evidence prosecutors presented at the trial, including Credico’s testimony.

“Stone and Credico did not even discuss Assange until August 19, 2016, when Credico told Stone that he was trying to book Assange on his radio show,” the sentencing memo says.

Stone was referring to Jerome Corsi, a conservative author, the memo says.

On Aug. 2, 2016, Corsi told Stone in an email that WikiLeaks planned to release “very damaging” information about Clinton.

After exchanging emails with Corsi in late July and early August, Stone told an audience at an event Aug. 8, 2016, held by the Southwest Broward Republican Organization that he had “communicated with Assange.” Stone told the group, “I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation, but there’s no telling what the October surprise may be.”

Prosecutors presented evidence that Stone threatened Credico in an attempt to prevent him from testifying before the House committee and contradicting Stone’s testimony.

Stone “engaged in witness tampering by urging Credico either to corroborate this false account, or to tell the Committee that he could not remember the relevant events, or to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying before the Committee,” the Justice Department said in a news release after Stone’s conviction. “Credico ultimately invoked his Fifth Amendment right in response to a Committee subpoena.”

Stone lied when he told the House committee “that he had no written communications with his intermediary and that he had no written communications referencing Assange,” according to the sentencing memo.

“In fact, Stone exchanged numerous text messages and emails about WikiLeaks with both Corsi (the actual intermediary) and Credico (the person Stone falsely identified as his intermediary),” the memo says.

“When the FBI began investigating Stone’s conduct in 2018, the text messages between Stone and Credico from November 2016 to November 2017, which the Committee surely would have subpoenaed if Stone had told the truth about their existence, were gone,” the sentencing memo says.

Stone lied when he told the House committee that he “did not ask the intermediary to do anything on Stone’s behalf,” the memo says. “In fact, as early as July 2016, Stone told Corsi to ‘get to Assange’ and ‘get the pending wikileaks emails.’ ”

Stone lied when he said “he had never discussed his conversations with the person he referred to as his … ‘intermediary’ with anyone involved in the Trump Campaign,” the sentencing memo says. “In fact, Stone had conversations with Gates, Bannon, and Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort about information that he had received from Corsi and Credico.” Federal prosecutors submitted Stone’s phone records that showed more than 150 calls with Manafort, more than 120 with Gates and 60 with Trump, as Politico reported.

In presenting their case for Stone to serve up to nine years in prison, the federal prosecutors said his “obstructive conduct” was “a direct and brazen attack on the rule of law.”

“Stone was not compelled to testify falsely before Congress. He could have told the truth, or he could have declined the invitation to testify altogether,” the memo says. “Instead, Stone chose another option: he lied to Congress and then he tampered with a witness who could expose those lies. Stone’s goal, at the outset, was to obstruct the Committee’s search for the truth.”

“Investigations into election interference concern our national security, the integrity of our democratic processes, and the enforcement of our nation’s criminal laws,” the memo says. “These are issues of paramount concern to every citizen of the United States. Obstructing such critical investigations thus strikes at the very heart of our American democracy.”

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