Roger Stone, a longtime political adviser to Donald Trump, has been
arrested by the FBI as part of the Russia probe and charged with seven
counts.
Roger Stone was arrested as law enforcement raided his house just
after 6am in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was then indicted on seven
counts, including one count of obstruction of an official proceeding,
five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering.
Stone will appear in court later today.
Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russia’s interference in the
2016 US election and any ties to the Trump campaign, orchestrated the
arrest.
Mueller’s indictment states that during 2016 Stone spoke to senior
Trump campaign officials about Wikileaks ‘and information it might have
had that would be damaging to the Clinton campaign. Stone was contacted
by senior Trump campaign officials to inquire about future releases by’
Wikileaks, which the document calls ‘Organisation 1’.
It states that Stone made ‘multiple false statements’ about his
interactions regarding Wikileaks, and ‘falsely denied possessing records
that contained evidence of these interactions’, and ‘attempted to
persuade a witness to provide false testimony to and withhold pertinent
information from the investigations’.
The document later states that on or about 4 October 2016, the head
of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, ‘held a press conference but did not
release any new materials pertaining to the Clinton campaign. Shortly
afterwards, Stone received an email from the high-ranking Trump campaign
official asking about the status of future releases by (Wikileaks).
Stone answered that the head of (Wikileaks) had a “serious security
concern” but that (Wikileaks) would release “a load every week going
forward”.’