Roger Stone Arrested in Mueller Probe — Details
UPDATED: Stone released, but with massive restrictions. See below.
BREAKING: Roger Jason Stone Jr. has been arrested in Fort Lauderdale, Florida during the very early hours of Friday morning, following the bringing of an indictment by a federal grand jury on 24 January in Washington DC Office that had heard evidence presented by the Office of Special Counsel directed by Robert Mueller. The grand jury had conducted a rare Thursday session yesterday. The indictment is devastating and detailed, and lists seven specific charges, including obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and five counts of making false statements.
CNN has video of the arrest:
So bizzare.
CNN airs footage of FBI surrounding Roger Stone as they are about to arrest him in the early hours of this morning. pic.twitter.com/rYBwrivsdD
— Braxton (@braxtonryn) January 25, 2019
CNN:
Law enforcement raided Stone’s house, and CNN witnessed uniformed and armed law enforcement approach his house just after 6 a.m. ET in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Pounding on his door, one agent said: “FBI. Open the door.”
Stone opened the door.
Mr. Stone, a self-described dirty trickster who began his career as a campaign aide for Richard M. Nixon and has a tattoo of Nixon on his back, has long maintained that he had no connection to Russia’s attempts to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. He sometimes seemed to taunt American law enforcement agencies, daring them to find hard evidence to link him to the Russian meddling campaign.
His brash behavior made him less of a subject of news media scrutiny than other current and former aides to President Trump — like the character in a whodunit who readers immediately dismiss as too obvious to have committed the crime.
But the special counsel’s investigators spent months encircling Mr. Stone, renewing scrutiny about his role during the 2016 presidential race.
Indictment: “By in or around June and July 2016, STONE informed senior Trump Campaign officials that he had info indicating Org. 1 had docs whose release would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign. The head of Org. 1 was located … at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.”
Listed in the indictment:
- “Organization one”: Wikileaks
- “Individual two”: radio host Randy Credico
Given the amount of detail laid out in the indictment, it is clear that Mueller’s team is targeting multiple senior officials in the Trump campaign
The 45-paragraph indictment can be found here.
Stone is scheduled to make his first court appearance this morning at federal court in Fort Lauderdale.
UPDATE: Oh my!
The indictment alleges that Stone had been in contact with top-ranking Trump campaign officials about efforts to leak damaging information about Hillary Clinton just before the 2016 election.
According to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, one of the senior officials who reached out to Stone was Steve Bannon, who served as CEO of the Trump campaign during the election’s final stages.
UPDATE: Trump’s people had better circle the hookers er, wagons. Via The Hill…
Kristin Davis, also known as the “Manhattan Madam,” told CNN that authorities also searched a New York duplex that she shares with Stone.
She told the network that she has recently moved out of the residence and wasn’t there when the FBI arrived.
UPDATE: CNN, NBC report that Stone appeared in DC federal court today and was released — withyuuuge restrictions. He posted a $250,000 bind and his travel is restricted to Florida, New York, and Washington. He also must surrender his passport and not change residential address.
DEVELOPING…