Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Special counsel digging into Roger Stone’s past
Mueller seeking to apply pressure in meddling probe
Roger Stone’s wellknown past as a dirty trickster may be the vise Special Counsel Robert Mueller uses to squeeze him for information about Russian attempts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.
CNN is reporting that Mueller’s team is combing through Stone’s past as part of its investigation of whether he was involved in Russia’s stealing information from the Democratic Party.
Dissemination of that information via WikiLeaks damaged Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and helped Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Stone, whose involvement in politics dates back to Richard Nixon, has been a confidante of and adviser to Trump.
Stone had election-year contact with Guccifer 2.0, which disseminated stolen Democratic emails but has consistently said he didn’t conspire with any Russians or commit any crime.
Weeks before the hacked emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta were released in 2016, Stone ominously predicted on Twitter that Podesta would soon be facing scrutiny.
Stone, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, said in a speech in West Palm Beach and in an interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel last month that Mueller might bring charges against him in an attempt to get him to turn on Trump — something Stone said he would never do.
“I will never roll on Donald Trump,” he said.
At least 12 current or former Stone associates have been interviewed by the FBI or Mueller’s investigators. At least eight have appeared before a federal grand jury, Stone said.
He claimed last month that the FBI “tried to question my cleaning lady and FBI agents have been sifting through my garbage. Here’s what I can tell you: They will find no evidence of Russian collusion,” he said, adding “I don’t drink Russian vodka. I don’t take Russian dressing on my salads.”
If he’s indicted, Stone suggested it would be for “an extraneous crime” that has nothing to do with Russia. He noted that observers have suggested that everyone commits inadvertent felonies and that prosecutors are notorious for their ability to get grand juries to do anything, repeating the old line that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.
CNN quoted “people familiar with the situation” said investigators are focused mainly on Stone’s 2016 activities.
According to the CNN report posted Tuesday evening: “The questions about Stone’s past reveal how prosecutors are trying to establish a pattern of whether Stone has toed — or even crossed — the line in his prior political work. The lines of inquiry also raise the possibility that investigators could be readying charges against Stone for crimes unrelated to the Russian hacking …
“But witnesses have also been pressed about whether Stone has lived up to the dirty trickster public persona he has enthusiastically embraced for decades over the course of his political career,” CNN said.