FBI agents arrested longtime Trump associate Roger Stone in a paramilitary-style raid at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., early Friday morning. A CNN producer on the scene said the arrest involved “heavy weaponry.” Stone was taken into custody without incident.
The arrest followed action by a grand jury in Washington, D.C., under Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller. On Thursday, the grand jury indicted Stone on seven counts of lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstructing a congressional investigation. So what, specifically, is Stone charged with doing?
All the counts stem from Stone’s Sept. 26, 2017, interview with the House Intelligence Committee investigating Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 election and the response by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Stone is not charged with lying to or attempting to obstruct the Mueller investigation.
The special counsel’s charges involve Stone’s House testimony about WikiLeaks and its release of hacked material from the Democratic National Committee and, later, from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta during the 2016 campaign. The indictment does not say Stone communicated with Wikileaks head Julian Assange. Rather, it says Stone lied about his attempts to learn Assange’s intentions through two intermediaries: journalist and provocateur Jerome Corsi and radio host Randy Credico.
Count One alleges that Stone obstructed the House committee’s investigation by denying he had emails and other documents about WikiLeaks-related contacts. During his House testimony, Stone was asked if he had “emails to anyone concerning the allegations of hacked documents … or any discussions you have had with third parties about [WikiLeaks]?” Stone answered that he did not, when in fact he had a bunch of emails and other communications. The obstruction charge also alleges Stone attempted to prevent Credico from testifying or tried to convince him to testify falsely.
Counts two through six concern specific statements to the House committee. Count Two is based on Stone’s assertion that he did not have emails.
Count Three alleges that Stone lied when he said that Credico was his only “go-between” to Assange, when in fact, Stone was also in contact with Corsi for that purpose. “At no time did Stone identify [Corsi] to [the House] as another individual Stone contacted to serve as a ‘go-between,'” the indictment says.
Count Four alleges that Stone lied when he said he did not ask Credico to communicate anything to Assange, when in fact Stone asked both Credico and Corsi to get in touch with Assange “to pass on requests … for documents Stone believed would be damaging to the Clinton campaign.”
Count Five alleges that Stone lied when he told the House that he and Credico did not communicate via text message or email about WikiLeaks. Stone told the committee the two talked over the phone, when in fact, according to the indictment, “Stone and [Credico] … engaged in frequent written communications by email and text message.”
Count Six alleges that Stone lied when he testified that he had never discussed his conversations with Credico with anyone at the Trump campaign, when in fact, “Stone spoke to multiple individuals involved in the Trump campaign about what he claimed to have learned from his intermediary to [WikiLeaks].”
Count Seven is a witness tampering charge, alleging that Stone tried to convince Credico to take the Fifth or to lie to the House committee.
The indictment does not allege that Stone had any direct communications with Assange, nor does it allege that Stone or anyone else at the Trump campaign had any direct communications with Assange or any foreknowledge of actions that WikiLeaks took. At various times, Stone claimed to have foreknowledge — a hint that something big was up — but the indictment suggests that he did not, in fact, know what WikiLeaks was going to do.
The indictment does say there were communications between Stone and people in the Trump campaign related to WikiLeaks. Of course, everyone in the world was talking about the WikiLeaks disclosures in the days following their publication. The indictment says: “After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by [WikiLeaks], a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information [WikiLeaks] had regarding the Clinton campaign. Stone thereafter told the Trump campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by [WikiLeaks].”
There has already been much speculation about that passage. The first thing to note is that it concerned the period after WikiLeaks’ disclosure of DNC emails — no allegation of foreknowledge. But what does “was directed” mean? Does it mean that Donald Trump himself directed someone on his campaign to get in touch with Stone to find out what was going on? It could. There’s no doubt that everyone in the political world was trying to figure out what was going on in the days after release of the DNC emails. Were there more? About what? Were they going to be released?
Whoever the “was directed” person was, the Stone indictment, like all Mueller has issued until now, does not allege that there was a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 election.
The indictment also suggests that by October 2016, with the election fast approaching, the Trump campaign was no longer paying any attention to Stone. In one email, Stone said he would tell a top Trump campaign official about WikiLeaks, “but he doesn’t call me back.”
In the end, it appears Stone’s big problem was his big mouth. He liked to brag about being behind all sorts of nefarious deeds when in fact he was not, or he had a tangential connection to them. That led to this chain of events: 1) Stone bragged in public; 2) the House committee asked him about his bragging under oath; and 3) Mueller investigated the veracity of Stone’s sworn testimony. If Stone had not popped off about himself all the time, he probably would not have gotten himself in trouble.
Stone presented a pretty accurate picture of himself in an interview last November with CNN’s Michael Smerconish. “What I have done here is perfectly legal,” Stone said. “I took a solid tip and entirely public information, it could be gleaned from the WikiLeaks Twitter feed and by setting a Google News Alert on Julian Assange and reading every interview, to hype and punk and promote and posture and bluff the Democrats.”
The problem came when Stone was asked under oath about his statements. It is one thing to hype and punk and promote and posture and bluff when talking to the press, but another to hype and punk and promote and posture and bluff when testifying under oath to a congressional committee. Roger Stone knows that now.
