Roger Stone, a longtime adviser and confidant to Donald Trump who has been named in news reports as one of at least four individuals under FBI observation over alleged contacts with Russian intelligence, has called for an official inquiry into the swirling crisis.



Stone has called on the White House to order an immediate investigation through the Department of Justice over alleged improper links between members of the Trump inner circle and the Kremlin during the course of the 2016 presidential campaign. His request adds to a mounting chorus of demands from senior congressional members and outside advocacy groups for an official inquiry into the affair.

In an interview with the Guardian, Stone appealed to Trump, whom he has been close to for almost 40 years, to convene an inquiry through Jeff Sessions, the newly appointed US attorney general. “The president should tell his attorney general that either he finds proof of this, or he puts it to bed and announces none of it happened.”

The crisis of Russian contacts is threatening to derail the Trump administration within its first month. On Monday, the president’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign over secret discussions with the Russian ambassador to Washington.

I can speak for myself, there was no collusion, I have no connection with the Russians. Roger Stone

On Tuesday the New York Times reported several Trump associates, including members of his presidential campaign, had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence officials. The newspaper named Stone as one of those examined by the FBI, though it added it was not certain whether his phone calls had been intercepted.

Stone, a lobbyist known as a master of the darker arts of politics, was a senior adviser to Trump at the start of his presidential run but was forced out early on, following a falling-out with others in the inner team. He told the Guardian that he would welcome an inquiry from the justice department into the Russian allegations: “I would relish the opportunity to testify in public under oath on this issue.”

He went on to describe claims that the Trump campaign and associates engaged improperly with Russian intelligence officials as “bunk” based on no proof. He said: “I can speak for myself, there was no collusion, I have no connection with the Russians, I’ve never taken anything from them, I don’t represent them, I’m not talking to some middle man. If the government has evidence that I was colluding with the Russians in Donald Trump’s campaign they should indict me immediately. And if they don’t they should send me a letter apologising, because this is an outrage and a smear.”

So far the Republican leadership in Congress has resisted demands for an official investigation into contact with the Russians involving Flynn and other people in Trump’s orbit. But pressure is increasing on the White House, with several GOP senators urging a wide investigation that would look at Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election from all angles.

There are already four congressional committees looking into various aspects of the Russian crisis.

The New York Times named four Trump associates as those who have been under FBI examination: Stone, Flynn, Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager for a period last year, and Carter Page, a former adviser to the campaign on foreign affairs. Stone said he had advised Manafort to sue the Times, adding that neither he nor Manafort had any knowledge of Page.

“The guy [Carter Page] gets himself on a 100-member advisory committee with a bunch of others and declares himself Trump’s chief adviser on Russia – I don’t know who this guy is,” Stone said.

In his new book, a narrative of the 2016 election called The Making of the President, Stone tries to explain the nature of his engagement to Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, over the publication of thousands of private emails of senior Democratic figures at highly sensitive stages in the race. Intelligence agencies have traced the source of the emails back to Russian intelligence, while Stone himself has been accused by the victims of the hacking of having colluded with Assange.

On 8 August last year, just as the general election between Trump and Clinton was getting under way, Stone caused a stir when he told a meeting in Florida that “I actually have communicated with Assange”. He says now that he was referring to a “mutual friend” who had been in touch both with him and with the WikiLeaks chief.

“He told me Assange was in possession of information that would roil the race and would really rock Hillary’s campaign, and that they would begin releasing it in October. That’s the extent of what I knew in advance.”

Stone caused further comment later that month, on 21 August, when he posted a tweet in which he made a thinly veiled threat against John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair.

Trust me, it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary — Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) August 21, 2016

Stone said that the tweet was innocent – it had nothing to do with WikiLeaks’ later posting of Podesta’s personal emails, containing embarrassing details, at a crucial late stage in the presidential campaign. He insisted that he was referring to research he was doing at the time on Podesta’s own Russian alliances.

“Three days after that tweet I publish under my own byline an extensive story on Podesta and money laundering and the Russian mob. None of that came from WikiLeaks,” he told the Guardian.

However, his comment conflicts with the actual timeline between the tweet and the publication of the article. His article, “Russian Mafia money laundering, the Clinton Foundation and John Podesta”, was posted on Stone’s own website, stonecoldtruth.com, on 13 October, some eight weeks after his tweet that directly mentioned Podesta.

Shortly before the election, Podesta accused Stone of having conspired with Assange to release the emails in a blatant attempt to knock Clinton’s campaign off course. In his Guardian interview, Stone denied having prior knowledge of the content of the WikiLeaks dump, adding: “I certainly didn’t know they were going to hack John Podesta’s emails specifically, even though he claims I knew in advance.”

Though Stone was not directly employed by Trump through most of the 2016 campaign, he does claim credit for some of the most virulent aspects of the race. In the run-up to the election he launched an initiative to protect against voter fraud that was widely denounced as a form of voter intimidation. In his book he also boasts of having conceived the idea of campaign T-shirts modeled on the legendary Obama “Hope” design, with Obama’s image replaced with that of Bill Clinton and the word “Hope” exchanged for “Rape”.