WASHINGTON, January 25, 2019 — A Washington grand jury working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” and former Trump campaign official Roger Stone, Jr., on charges of obstruction of justice, lying to Congress, and witness tampering.
Citing Stone’s attorney, television morning shows first reported that FBI agents had picked up the longtime Trump associate at his Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home just after 6:00 a.m. Friday.
While other Trump associates who’ve charged by Mueller’s grand jury have been allowed to voluntary surrender, Video footage broadcast by CNN revealed Stone’s arrest was carried out by a team of heavily-armed FBI agents in body armor.
Footage broadcast by CNN shows FBI agents pounding on Stone’s door.
The CNN footage shows the agents surrounding Stone’s home, at which point one agent approached the house’s front door, pounded on it three times, and announced “FBI! Open the door!”
Under Justice Department procedures, he will make his initial appearance in a federal district court in Florida on Friday.
His arrest makes him the latest in a series of Trump campaign officials and associates to face charges as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Like another of the president’s confidantes, former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen, the bulk of the charges against Stone stem from false or misleading statements made in testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Stone’s career in politics began during Nixon’s 1972 campaign, after which he first gained a measure of notoriety as the youngest person interviewed by Watergate investigators.
He was 19 years old — a mere boy among the president’s men — when allegations of obstruction of justice and abuse of power brought down the man he’d later call his mentor, whose face is still tattooed on his back.
Now 66 years old, the veteran lobbyist, political operative and pro-Trump media personality’s life has come full circle as he once again finds himself at the center of a White House scandal that has gripped the nation for the past two years.
Prosecutors allege that Stone lied to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence about contacts he had with WikILeaks founder Julian Assange, conspiracy theorist and birther activist Jerome Corsi, and senior officials with Trump’s presidential campaign in the course of his attempts to gain information on when the Russia-linked stolen document repository would release emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee.
Mueller and his team also allege that Stone obstructed justice by encouraging a person identified as “Person-2” — widely believed to be radio personality Randy Credico — to lie to investigators from the House committee, and engaged threatened Credico in order to dissuade him from cooperating with the House probe.
The indictment, which was signed by Mueller himself, also strongly implies that either Trump or one of his family members directed Stone to contact WikiLeaks in pursuit of information.
At the White House, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders attempted to distance Trump from the man who’d been pushing him to run for president since the 1980s.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with the president. It doesn’t have anything to do with the White House,” Sanders said while speaking to reporters outside the West Wing. She declined to answer reporters’ questions as to whether Trump had “directed” the “high-ranking Trump campaign official” to contact Stone.
Jay Sekulow, the conservative activist and litigator who serves as one of Trump’s personal attorneys, echoed Sanders’ comments in a statement to BeltwayBreakfast.
“The indictment today does not allege Russian collusion by Roger Stone or anyone else. Rather, the indictment focuses on alleged false statements Mr. Stone made to Congress,” Sekulow wrote.
Despite the Trump team’s assertions to the contrary, several sections of the 27-page indictment link Stone’s actions to the president’s 2016 campaign.
In laying out the case that Stone lied to Congress about whether he discussed WikiLeaks with anyone during the 2016 campaign, it cites an October 3, 2016, email from Stone to a “supporter involved with the Trump campaign,” in which Stone wrote: “Spoke to my friend in London last night. The payload is still coming.”
But the most direct link to the president contained within the indictment might be the revelation that on October 4, 2016, Stone “recieved an email from the high-ranking Trump Campaign official asking about the status of future releases by [WikiLeaks].”
According to the indictment, the official — thought to be former Trump campaign manager and White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon — “was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign.”
Stone replied to the “high-ranking Trump campaign official” that same day, informing him that WikiLeaks would release “a load [of stolen documents] every week going forward.”
This story was updated at 11:38 am to include a statement from Counsel to the President Jay Sekulow.
Andrew Feinberg covers the White House, Capitol Hill, and anywhere else news happens for BeltwayBreakfast.com and BroadbandBreakfast.com.
He has reported on policy and politics in the nation's capital since 2007, and his writing has appeared in publications like The Hill, Politico, Communications Daily, Silicon Angle, and Washington Business Journal.
He has also appeared on both daytime and prime radio and television news programs on NPR, Sirius-XM, CNN, MSNBC, ABC (Australia), Al Jazeera, NBC Digital, Voice of America, TV Rain (Russia) and CBS News.
Andrew wishes he could say he lives in Washington, DC with his dog, but unfortunately, he lives in a no-dogs building in suburban Maryland.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands during a meeting at the 2017 G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany
WASHINGTON, May 30, 2019 — After two and a half years of denying that Russia’s interference in the 2016 election was aimed towards boosting his candidacy, President Trump on Thursday admitted that Russia’s efforts had helped him win the presidency.
“Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected. It was a crime that didn’t exist,” Trump wrote during a Thursday morning tweetstorm meant to frame counter-narrative to the declaration by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller that his team could not say the President did not obstruct justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey or by directing associates to order Mueller’s firing.
Mueller ended roughly two years of silence on Wednesday — his last day at the Justice Department — with a dramatic public statement revealing that his team had not been permitted to consider whether Trump violated the law because of a longstanding DOJ policy forbidding the indictment of a sitting chief executive.
“Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider,” Mueller said, adding later that the Constitution “requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”
Trump’s statement that he “had nothing to do with Russia helping [him] get elected” is the first time he has ever acknowledged that either the massive social media disinformation campaign or the theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee and members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign team — and their distribution through third parties like WikiLeaks — played a role in his election.
But as he departed the White House en route to the Air Force Academy’s graduation ceremony, Trump went back on the attack against Mueller by repeating a number of baseless claims about alleged “conflicts of interest” that should have made the former FBI director ineligible for the Special Counsel position.
“Robert Mueller should have never been chosen because he wanted the FBI job and didn’t get it,” Trump said, repeating a false claim he has repeatedly made concerning a visit Mueller made to the White House in 2017, shortly before then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed him to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Despite Trump’s frequent claim that Mueller had asked to interview for the job he’d held from 2001 through 2013, page 293 of the Mueller Report describes how White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon “recalled that the White House had invited Mueller to speak to the President to offer a perspective on the institution of the FBI.”
According to the report, Bannon told investigators that “although the White House thought about beseeching Mueller to become Director again, he did not come in looking for the job.”
Trump also attacked Mueller for not looking into a wide range of conspiracy theories involving former FBI Director James Comey, ex-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI Agent Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page before suggesting Mueller was a “total conflicted person” who harbored political bias against him and his presidency “I think Mueller is a true ‘Never Trumper,’ he’s someone that dislikes Donald Trump,” he said.
When asked about his tweet that seemed to acknowledge Russia’s role in his 2016 win, he immediately began an attempt to walk back what he had tweeted earlier that day before suggesting — without evidence — that Russia’s efforts to boost his candidacy had instead helped “the other side” and equating unfavorable press coverage with a state-sponsored effort to sway another country’s election.
“You know who helped me get elected? I got me elected,” he said, pointing a finger at his chest. “Russia didn’t help me at all.”
However, one person who has acknowledged Russia’s role is Russian President Vladimir Putin. During a joint news conference with Trump at the two leaders’ summit in Helsinki, Finland, Putin was asked if he had wanted Trump to win and directed any actions to further that goal.
WASHINGTON, May 29, 2019 — After more than two years of silence, Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Wednesday said that his office could not say “with confidence” that President Trump did not violate laws against obstructing justice, but charging him with violating them was “not an option” because Justice Department policy precludes indicting a sitting chief executive for a federal crime.
“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not,” Mueller said, directly contradicting claims of “no obstruction” made by both Attorney General William Barr and President Trump himself.
Instead, Mueller explained that his office was constrained by a legal opinion authored by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which concludes that indicting a sitting president would be unconstitutional.
“Under longstanding department policy, a president president cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office,” Mueller said.
“Charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider.”
In a clear nod toward Congress’ power to impeach and remove a chief executive for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” Mueller explained that the Constitution “requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”
Mueller’s refutation of Barr’s claims that Trump did not obstruct justice came nearly two years to the day he was named as Special Counsel by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Rosenstein appointed Mueller, a lifelong Republican who served in senior positions in the Justice Department during the the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton administrations before serving as FBI Director under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, following Trump’s firing of Mueller’s successor as FBI Director, James Comey.
In a letter sent to inform Comey of his termination, Trump cited a memorandum by Rosenstein which criticized Comey’s handling of the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
But Rosenstein decided to appoint Mueller as a Special Counsel after Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt that he’d fired Comey because of the FBI investigation into whether Trump or members of campaign had any involvement with Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Mueller described that interference campaign as consisting of “multiple systematic attempts” by individuals currently under indictment.
“That allegation [of interference] deserves the attention of every American,” he said.
Trump immediately brushed off Mueller’s refutation of his claim to have been exonerated by the report in a tweet which blatantly misstated what Mueller had said moments before.
“Nothing changes from the Mueller Report. There was insufficient evidence and therefore, in our Country, a person is innocent. The case is closed!” Trump tweeted.
Other Trump associates weighed in shortly after, echoing the same claims Trumpworld figures have made since the Mueller Report’s release while largely ignoring Mueller’s statement emphasizing the fact that Trump could not be charged with a crime and that impeachment was the only constitutionally-permissible way to address wrongdoing by a President under DOJ rules.
“Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s remarks today confirmed what we already knew. There was no collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign, and there was no case for obstruction,” Trump 2020 Campaign Manager Brad Parscale said in an emailed statement.
“President Trump has been fully and completely exonerated. Mueller said his investigation is over. The case is now closed.”
Another statement posted to Twitter by White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders closely tracked Parscale’s language and repeated some of the same baseless claims about what Mueller and his report had said.
“The Special Counsel has completed the investigation, closed his office, and has closed the case,” Sanders wrote in a tweet. “The report was clear — there was no collusion, no conspiracy — and the Justice Department confirmed there was no obstruction.”
“After two years, the Special Counsel is moving on with his life, and everyone else should do the same.”
But Mueller’s statement did not support Parscale’s and Sanders’ assertions that there had been insufficient evidence to charge the President with obstruction of justice.
In his remarks, Mueller only noted that there had not been sufficient evidence to charge Trump or any of his associates with conspiring alongside any participants in Russia’s efforts to interfere with the election, while his report detailed numerous instances of Trump campaign officials meeting with Russian nationals and promoting material that Russia had stolen from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign officials.
While Trumpworld dismissed Mueller’s remarks as nothing new, the sole Republican to speak out in favor of the House launching an impeachment inquiry, Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., reacted to Mueller’s nod toward Congress’ impeachment powers in a tweet posted shortly after the Special Counsel concluded his statement.
Then-FBI Director Robert Mueller is pictured in the Oval Office in 2012
WASHINGTON, May 29, 2019 — Special Counsel Robert Mueller will deliver a statement on his investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the Justice Department said in a statement Thursday.
Mueller, who was director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2001 through 2013, has not spoken publicly since then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed him as a Justice Department Special Counsel in May 2017.
His remarks are set to begin at 11:00 am, though the Justice Department said Mueller will not take questions afterward.
A senior Trump administration official said the White House was notified of Mueller’s intention to speak last night, and that the administration would withhold comment until after he has concluded his remarks.
As White House communications staffers began what one press aide described as a “half-hour meeting,” Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders revealed that President Trump is “aware” of Mueller’s impending statement and was monitoring the situation
Sanders had no comment on whether Trump would speak following Mueller’s remarks or on whether the White House been briefed on what Mueller plans to say.
This is a developing story — check back for details.
