President Trump’s colleague and former campaign adviser Roger Stone was indicted by a grand jury in Washington convened by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on seven counts, including making false statements about his interactions with WikiLeaks regarding its release during the 2016 presidential campaign of emails stolen from the DNC and Hillary Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta.
The indictments, which include charges of obstruction and witness tampering, stated Stone “spoke to senior Trump Campaign officials about Organization 1 [WikiLeaks] and information it might have had that would be damaging to the Clinton campaign.”
Those senior officials later contacted Stone “to inquire about future releases.”
In addition, the indictment said the Russian military intel agency GRU using the moniker Guccifer 2.0 was in contact with multiple people in the Trump campaign. The Russian operatives were responsible for the break-ins at the DNC and others associated with Clinton.
Stone was charged with lying to the House Intelligence Committee “about his interactions with Organization 1” and falsely denying “possessing records that contained evidence of these interactions.”
He’s also accused of trying to compel a witness, radio host Randy Credico, to testify falsely and to withhold “pertinent information.”
Despite Stone’s public declaration that he had been in contact with WikiLeaks, the whistleblower site repeatedly denied those interactions and Stone shifted his story to say that he had been in contact with WikiLeaks through an intermediary.
Indeed, Stone seemed to know about the impending release of damaging emails, famously noting at one point that Podesta, who chaired the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, would soon have his “time in the barrel.”
The former Clinton associate swiftly responded to Stone’s indictment Friday, tweeting “Rogers’s time in the barrel—and it’s headed over Niagara Falls.”
