Enter Roger Stone, throwing punches. For the past two weeks, the spotlight has been (correctly) trained on Donald Trump Jr. and the ever-expanding cast of Russian characters who met with him at Trump Tower. But now Stone, the dandified dirty trickster and sometime adviser to Trump Sr., is muscling his way back into view.

The House Intelligence committee will soon be grilling Stone about his teasing reference last summer to Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s upcoming “time in the barrel,” plus his communication with the Russian-affiliated hacker Guccifer 2.0. “What was Stone’s relationship with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks? What did he know and when?” asks Mike Quigley, an Illinois congressman and a Democratic member of the committee. “Was he given advance warning? He’s going to be under oath, so let’s assume for a second he has to tell us the truth. General [Michael] Flynn, Roger Stone—these people can connect a lot of dots. Maybe a majority of them.”

In an interview, Stone denies facilitating the WikiLeaks release or being a part of any Russian conspiracy. “I believe I have been denigrated, and false statements have been made about me in public session,” he says. “I never had any Russian clients, never worked for the Russian government, never been to Russia, don’t have any Russian contacts.”

Stone, however, is already battling with the committee’s members. He announced that the committee canceled his scheduled July 24 appearance, saying “these hapless Democrat simps . . . will not give me my day in court.” A committee source, however, says the delay is because Stone hasn’t yet turned over requested documents. “We have provided everything we have been asked to provide,” a lawyer for Stone says. Stone has also threatened to sue California Democrat Jackie Speier for, Stone claims, falsely accusing Stone of being on the Kremlin’s payroll (in March, Speier suggested Stone and others were entangled in a “spiderweb” spun by Vladimir Putin). He has taunted Eric Swalwell as “a yellow-bellied coward,” “a lightweight,” and “a mannequin.” And Stone, a patron of swingers’ clubs, has promised to “spank [the Democrats] like children.”

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The cartoonish pugnacity is in keeping with Stone’s theatrical personality. A House Intelligence insider believes it is also calculated: “He is trying to distract from the fact that he’s at the center of a serious investigation.” Another motivation may be Stone’s mixed history when under oath. He has had plenty of practice, starting at the age of 19, when he was called before the Watergate grand jury to talk about a pro-Nixon demonstration he had helped arrange for Nixon’s CREEP. In 2000, David Grandeau questioned Stone for two hours in a prior Trump-related case. Grandeau was the executive director of New York state’s temporary commission on lobbying, and he grew suspicious about an expensive advertising campaign attacking proposed casinos. The media blitz was attributed to something called the Institute for Law and Society, a front group that turned out to have been set up by Stone—and financed by competing casino owner Trump.