PROSECUTORS PULLED BACK THE CURTAIN ON ROGER STONE’S PRIVATE DEALINGS WITH DONALD TRUMP’S 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN ON WEDNESDAY, PORTRAYING STONE AS A LIAR WHO MISLED U.S. LAWMAKERS.
STONE TRIAL
WASHINGTON • The prosecution in the trial of Roger Stone on Wednesday painted President Donald Trump’s longtime adviser as a liar in a criminal case stemming from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe that detailed Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.
The prosecution and defence gave their opening statements and then prosecutors called their first witness in federal court in Stone’s trial after a 12-person jury was selected.
The 67-year-old veteran Republican political operative — a self-described “dirty trickster” and “agent provocateur” — has pleaded not guilty to charges of obstructing justice, witness tampering and lying to the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.
“Stone straight up lied” to Congress, prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky told the jury.
Stone has been a friend and ally of Trump for some 40 years.
“Now you’ll ask, why didn’t Roger Stone just tell the truth?” Zelinsky asked the jurors. “The evidence in this case will show that Roger Stone lied to the House Intelligence Committee because the truth looked bad.”
“The truth looked bad for the Trump campaign, and the truth looked bad for Donald Trump,” Zelinsky added.
Zelinsky accused Stone of five categories of lies. In the defence opening statement, Bruce Rogow, a lawyer for Stone, accused prosecutors of “plucking out five questions and answers” out of lengthy testimony that the defendant gave before the committee. Rogow said Stone did not “wilfully and intentionally” mislead lawmakers.
The prosecution said the jury will hear testimony from Steve Bannon, who served as an adviser to Trump during the campaign and in the White House, and former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates, who testified for the government last year in a trial that led to the conviction of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
U.S. intelligence agencies and Mueller concluded the hacking was done by Russia.
Stone is accused of lying to the Intelligence Committee about the Trump campaign’s efforts to obtain emails hacked by Russia that were published by the WikiLeaks website to harm Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson is presiding over the trial.
Defence lawyer Rogow urged jurors to consider Stone’s state of mind at the time he was speaking to the Intelligence Committee.
“We are talking about his state of mind that the Russians did not collude with him or with the Trump campaign — and that’s how he goes into this,” Rogow added.