The Washington Post - 05.11.2019

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

BY DEVLIN BARRETT,

SPENCER S. HSU

AND MANUEL ROIG-FRANZIA

Roger Stone heads to trial this
week in federal court, where
prosecutors plan to dive back
into an episode of political chica-
nery, alleged lies and conspirato-
rial texts that parallels the na-
scent impeachment inquiry into
his longtime friend President
Trump.
The trial of Stone, who has
long cultivated a public image as
a dirty trickster on the edges of
mainstream politics, is due to
start Tuesday with jury selection
and opening statements planned
Wednesday. He has been charged
with lying to Congress and trying
to tamper with a witness during a
congressional investigation into
interference in the 2016 election.
His trial offers the possibility
of fresh insights into the quest by
some in Trump’s orbit for a kind
of political kryptonite to use
against then-Democratic presi-
dential candidate Hillary Clinton
— secret emails that would, they
hoped, destroy her candidacy.
After Trump won the presiden-
cy, Stone’s role came under in-
tense public scrutiny as a possible
conduit between Trump’s cam-
paign and WikiLeaks, the anti-se-
crecy group that had published
Clinton-related emails stolen by
Russian government hackers.
The Stone indictment suggests
that what prosecutors found in-
stead was a failed conspiracy
among conspiracy theorists,
bookended by investigative dead
ends and unanswered questions
for the team of special counsel
Robert S. Mueller III.
The 23-page indictment
against Stone was the last set of
criminal charges leveled by Mu-
eller’s two-year investigation into
Russian interference in the 2016
election before he shut down his
office earlier this year.
There are, however, a number
of unidentified Mueller spinoff
cases that could, in theory, still
result in criminal cases.
“We don’t know that this will
be the last Mueller-related trial,
because there are at least a dozen
Mueller-referred cases out there,
and we will have to see if any-
thing comes of those,” said Ran-
dall Eliason, a former federal
prosecutor who teaches law at
George Washington University.
“There’s a lot of crazy atmospher-
ics to the Stone case, but the
actual charges are fairly straight-
forward — it’s about lying, and
the government’s best evidence is
his own emails and messages.”
Prosecutors aim to show that
Stone’s private text and email
conversations prove that his
statements to lawmakers in 2017
were lies meant to hide the
extent of his election-year efforts
to learn what dirt WikiLeaks
might have against Clinton, and
when WikiLeaks might release
the information.
Stone is one of Trump’s lon-
gest-serving advisers. The pair
met in the 1980s when Stone, 67,
talked the New York real estate
developer into donating to Presi-
dent Ronald Reagan’s campaign.
Trump became one of the first
clients of Stone’s Washington
lobbying and consulting busi-
ness.
Stone, who had long urged
Trump to run for president,
chaired Trump’s exploratory
committee in the late 1990s un-
der the banner of the Reform
Party.
When Trump launched his
presidential campaign in mid-
2015, Stone briefly served as a
formal adviser, and then after a
split, an informal sounding
board. In March 2016, Stone
helped bring his former business
partner Paul Manafort into
Trump’s campaign, which
Manafort eventually chaired.
Stone also made an important
introduction for Trump: Alex
Jones, the noted conspiracy theo-
rist and host of the influential
right-wing Infowars website and
associated media products.
In the summer of 2016, Stone
said in an interview with The
Washington Post that he was
receiving late-night calls from
then-candidate Trump via a
blocked number. Those phone
calls coincided with fervent be-
hind-the-scenes activity related
to anticipation that WikiLeaks
was preparing to release emails
that could hurt the Clinton cam-
paign.
Along the way, Stone interact-
ed with then-Trump campaign
official Stephen K. Bannon, who
is expected to be a trial witness.
Past emails suggest Bannon did
not think much of Stone’s claims
of inside information, but Stone’s
exchanges with two other indi-

viduals make up the heart of the

prosecutors’ case.

One of those individuals is

Jerome Corsi, a conspiracy theo-

rist best known for promoting

the false claim that Barack

Obama was not born in the

United States. Prosecutors say

that in late July 2016, a senior

Trump campaign official made

contact with Stone seeking to

learn what information

WikiLeaks had. Stone, according

to the indictment, had claimed to

Trump campaign officials in

June and July that he “had

information indicating

[WikiLeaks] had documents

whose release would be damag-

ing to the Clinton Campaign.”

Stone, in turn, allegedly tasked

Corsi in late July with getting

information about WikiLeaks’

plans. Corsi replied by email on

Aug. 2, according to the indict-

ment, that WikiLeaks founder

Julian Assange “plans 2 more

dumps. One shortly after I’m

back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned

to be very damaging.”

Corsi would later say he did

not have any direct contact with

WikiLeaks, and during the

course of the investigation he

made a number of claims that

prosecutors could not confirm,

according to people close to the

case. At one point, prosecutors

pressed Corsi to plead guilty to

lying, but he balked, and the

Justice Department dropped the

matter.

Stone has told The Post that he

spoke with Trump on Aug. 3, the

day after he received Corsi’s

email, but not about the

WikiLeaks tip.

“It just didn’t come up,” Stone

said in an interview with The

Post. “I am able to say we never

discussed WikiLeaks.”

Over the course of August

2016, Stone made several public

pronouncements, some based on

his back-and-forth with Corsi.

Five days after his August call

with Trump, Stone told a Repub-

lican group in South Florida that

WikiLeaks was poised to release

documents about the Clinton

Foundation.

Stone claimed to have a “back

channel” providing inside

knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans.

Many of those claims ended up

being untrue, but on Aug. 21,

2016, he tweeted: “Trust me, it

will soon Podesta’s time in the

barrel.” Stone has asserted that

the tweet has been misinterpret-

ed as referring solely to Clinton

campaign chairman John Podes-

ta. Instead, he has said, the

apostrophe was a typo and he

meant for the tweet to refer to

both Podesta and his lobbyist

brother, Tony.

That tweet seemed critically

important two months later,

when, on Oct. 7, WikiLeaks re-

leased the first of thousands of

emails hacked from Podesta’s

Gmail account. Suddenly, it

seemed as if Stone really did have

inside access and may even have

been conspiring with WikiLeaks,

which was, according to U.S.

intelligence agencies, being used

by Russian spies to try to influ-

ence the U.S. presidential elec-

tion.

Podesta speculated that the

Trump campaign had gotten ad-

vance warning of the release of

emails, and Stone became the

subject of speculation that he

may have been a conduit be-

tween WikiLeaks and the Trump

campaign. Stone and WikiLeaks

denied that suggestion.

When Stone was charged more

than two years later, the indict-

ment made no mention of the

tweet that had generated so

much suspicion. Instead of being

a conduit to Russian intelligence,

the document suggests, Stone

was a self-promoting spinmeis-

ter whose claims of having im-

portant connections may have

inadvertently landed him in seri-

ous legal trouble.

The seven-count indictment

alleges that after Stone’s efforts

to use Corsi to engage with

Assange, Stone turned to some-

one else as a possibility: former

radio host Randy Credico, who

interviewed Assange in late Au-

gust 2016.

In a 2017 interview with the

House Intelligence Committee,

Stone allegedly lied when he

denied having texts or emails

about his 2016 discussions sur-

rounding WikiLeaks, said that he

had only one associate who tried

to act as a go-between with

Assange, and never spoke to

anyone in the Trump campaign

about WikiLeaks’ plans.

Shortly after those denials,

Stone’s story began to fall apart,

prosecutors say.

On Dec. 1, 2017 — the day

former national security adviser

Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to

lying to the FBI — Stone engaged

in an angry back-and-forth with

Credico via text about the grow-

ing legal pressure.

Stone allegedly told Credico

that he should do a “Frank Pen-

tangeli” in his appearance before

the same committee — a refer-

ence to a gravelly voiced Mafia

character in the movie “Godfa-

ther: Part II,” who, when called to

testify to Congress, suddenly

feigns forgetting incriminating

information about his mobster

boss. The judge overseeing the

Stone trial has ruled that for

jurors to understand the movie

reference, they can read a tran-

script of the scene but cannot

watch it.

Credico is not identified by

name in the Stone indictment

but is referred to as “Person 2.”

Multiple people familiar with the

case have confirmed that Person

2 is Credico.

The day of the Flynn plea,

Credico texted Stone: “You need

to amend your testimony before I

testify,” to which Stone replied:

“If you testify you’re a fool... I

guarantee you are the one who

gets indicted for perjury if you’re

stupid enough to testify.”

As the investigations wore on,

the two increasingly turned

against each other, according to

evidence in the case.

In April 2018, Stone was so

angry that he allegedly texted to

Credico: “You are a rat. A stoolie”

and vowed to “take that dog away

from you,” which prosecutors say

was a threat to kidnap Credico’s

fluffy white dog, named Bianca.

Credico later brought Bianca

with him when he testified in

front of a Washington grand jury.

A month later, according to

the indictment, Credico wrote an

email to Stone, saying, “You

should have just been honest

with the house Intel committee

... you’ve opened yourself up to
perjury charges like an idiot.”
Stone, a self-described “agent
provocateur,” has used his prose-
cution in social media and in
court filings to rally Trump sup-
porters, attack the Justice De-
partment’s Russia investigation
and contest its central finding of
Russia’s “sweeping and systemic”
cyber-interference in the 2016
election.
But he has been repeatedly
slapped down by U.S. District
Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who
said he “has not come close” to
showing that the government
misled the judges who approved
the warrants exploring Russian
involvement.
Jackson has held open the
possibility of a contempt hearing
for Stone after his trial for what
she has called his repeated “mid-
dle-school” pretrial behavior in
online postings, despite a court
order that he not make public
comments attacking his indict-
ment, the conduct of the FBI,
intelligence agencies and gov-
ernment officials.
Jackson entered a gag order
and banned Stone from Insta-
gram, Twitter and Facebook until
after his trial, after Stone ignored
her warnings and his Instagram
account showed a photograph of
the judge’s face next to what
appeared to be the crosshairs of a
gun scope.
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

Rachel Weiner contributed to this

report.

Trial kicks off for longtime Trump ally Roger Stone

AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Roger Stone, center, former adviser to President Trump’s campaign, arrives at D.C. federal court on Monday. His trial, which starts Tuesday

with jury selection and opening statements planned Wednesday, offers the possibility of insights into interference in the 2016 election.

Charges include lying,

witness tampering amid

probe into 2016 election

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