Roger Stone, a former campaign adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump, was arrested by armed federal agents during a pre-dawn raid at his Florida home on Friday. Stone is charged with seven criminal counts of obstruction of justice and witness tampering.
Stone was also charged with making false statements to the House Intelligence Committee during a closed-door session in 2017, according to Robert Mueller’s office.
Stone was an adviser to Trump for decades and had contact with Trump during the 2016 campaign.
The indictment does not accuse Stone of meddling in the 2016 election or colluding with the Russians. Stone, a self-professed provocateur, bragged about his connections to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange throughout the 2016 election.
The indictment details Stone’s involvement in exposing stolen emails published by Wikileaks in the months leading up to the election. He often predicted when the emails would leak.
Thousands of emails were stolen from the Democratic National Committee’s unsecured servers by “Guccifer 2.0” who reportedly hacked into the DNC, Hillary Clinton’s foundation, and a computer belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
Stone promoted the email leaks on Twitter.com and informed his followers about explosive revelations contained in the emails before they were leaked online.
Stone promoted himself as someone who had direct contact with Assange, even claiming he once had dinner with Assange, which would not have been possible since Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for years.
According to a NY Times report, Stone presented himself as a Wikileaks insider to Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chairman and adviser at the time.
After Mueller was appointed as Special Prosector and began to focus his attention on Stone’s connections to Wikileaks, Stone changed his story, saying he was not connected to Wikileaks or Assange.
Stone claimed he actually got the information about Podesta’s leaked emails from radio host and activist Randy Credico. But Credico denied the allegations.
In February, Credico told the Daily Beast blog that Stone was “a lot of bravado,” and “a showman.”
The NY Times questioned “whether Mr. Stone was, in fact, a trusted intermediary to Wikileaks – or simply a master of puffery that made him appear so – remains a paramount question for Mr. Mueller’s investigators.”
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