'Prepare to die': Trump's longtime ally Roger Stone arrested in Russia probe

Roger Stone, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, was arrested in the special counsel's Russia investigation in a pre-dawn raid at his Florida home on Friday and was charged with lying to Congress and obstructing the probe.

The seven-count indictment against Stone, a self-proclaimed "dirty trickster" and an adviser to Trump in his unorthodox bid for the White House, is the first criminal case in months from special counsel Robert Mueller.

It provides the most detail to date about how Trump campaign associates in the summer of 2016 were actively seeking to politically benefit from the release of hacked material damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign. It alleges that unnamed senior Trump campaign officials, reported to include Steve Bannon, contacted Stone to ask when stolen emails relating to Clinton might be disclosed.

The indictment does not charge Stone with conspiring with WikiLeaks, which published the emails, or with the Russian officers that allegedly hacked them.

Longtime Trump ally and former adviser Roger Stone was arrested in a pre-dawn raid.Credit: Bloomberg

Instead, it accuses him of witness tampering, obstruction and false statements about his interactions related to WikiLeaks' release. Some of those false statements were made to the House intelligence committee, according to the indictment.

Roger Stone mimicked a Richard Nixon pose as he left a Florida court on bail.Credit: AP

The charges were unrelated to the President or the White House, Trump's press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said after the arrest.

"The President did nothing wrong," she told CNN.

Following his court appearance in Fort Lauderdale, Stone told reporters he would plead not guilty to all the charges against him and would not testify against Trump.

"I look forward to being fully and completely vindicated," he said.

Stone said any false statements he may have given to Congress would have been "immaterial and without intent".

The charges against him relate in "no way" to Russian collusion, he said.

Stone has faced scrutiny for his support for Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, when he implied he had access to information obtained by hackers that could embarrass Democrats.

The indictment filed on Friday include communications with others suggesting he may have had advance knowledge of plans by Wikileaks to release hacked emails. It also included new details about Trump aides specifically asking Stone about forthcoming Wikileaks dumps.

WikiLeaks, which is referred to as "Organisation 1" in the indictment, did not respond to a request for comment.

Roger Stone walks off stage on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July 2016, as WikiLeaks began dumping the Democrats' emails.Credit: New York Times

"The indictment was not unexpected, but it is still significant because it alleges coordination between the Trump Campaign and WikiLeaks," said Barbara McQuade, a former US Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.

CNN, in video of the arrest, showed a heavily armed FBI team taking Stone away from his home in the dark just before 6am and Stone surrendering without any issue.

A self-described "agent provocateur" of the American right and Republican veteran of Washington and New York City politics, Stone has a tattoo of the face of late president Richard Nixon on his back. His political career began with the Nixon presidential campaign in 1972.

The indictment described in detail numerous emails and text messages "during the 2016 campaign in which he discussed Organisation 1, its head, and its possession of hacked emails".

Stone still possessed many of those communications when he gave false testimony about them, prosecutors said in the indictment.

He also tried to persuade a witness to provide false testimony and withhold information from the congressional investigations, the indictment said.

US prosecutors pointed to two other individuals, including an unnamed political commentator with an online publication who regularly spoke with Trump throughout the campaign, a description that matches Jerome Corsi. They also described a radio host who Stone had known for more than 10 years, which matches the profile of Randy Credico.

Corsi declined to comment and Credico did not immediately respond to request for comment.

'Prepare to die'

Prosecutors accuse the political provocateur of threatening an associate who hosted a radio program, likely to be Credico, in an apparent attempt to stop the unnamed person from testifying to investigators.

The 24-page indictment is peppered with alleged threats, some with typos or grammatical errors, from Stone to the unnamed associate.

Stone allegedly called the associate "a rat", threatened his dog and invoked The Godfather Mafia movies in a bid to stop him from testifying.

• "You are a rat. A stoolie. You backstab your friends-run your mouth my lawyers are dying Rip you to shreds," Stone told the person in an April 9 email. He also threatened to "take that dog away from you" and said, "I am so ready. Let's get it on. Prepare to die (expletive)."
• "If you testify you're a fool. Because of tromp I could never get away with a certain (sic) my Fifth Amendment rights but you can. I guarantee you you are the one who gets indicted for perjury if you’re stupid enough to testify," Stone told the person in a December 1, 2017, text message.
• "You are so full of (expletive). You got nothing. Keep running your mouth and I'll file a bar complaint against your friend," Stone wrote in a May 21 email.
• Another December 1, 2017 message referred to a character in The Godfather: Part II who declines to testify to Congress after mobsters bring his brother from Italy to the hearing in an apparent threat to the man's safety. Court papers said that Stone told the person to "do a 'Frank Pentangeli'".

Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, had no immediate comment, according to an aide. Representatives for the heads of the two congressional committees that interviewed Stone could not be immediately reached.

Michael Caputo, a longtime Stone associate and former Trump campaign adviser, said he expected Stone to fight the charges.

"This has been rumoured to be coming down for several months, so Roger and his legal team are ready to fight these charges in court," Caputo told Reuters. "They can't prove collusion or conspiracy because it doesn't exist, so they’re going after him personally. He will be vindicated."

Reuters