Roger Stone arrest: Trump confidant faces major indictment as president attempts to reopen government
Trump campaign officials were in contact with Stone over Wikileaks and hacked Clinton campaign emails, according to indictment
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump’s former campaign adviser Roger Stone has been arrested by the FBI as part of Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible campaign links to Russia.
The FBI has charged Mr Stone on seven counts, invcluding witness tampering, obstruction and false statements about his interactions related to the release by WikiLeaks of hacked emails during the 2016 presidential election.
Stone disputed the charges while leaving a Florida courthouse on Friday, saying in a statement, "I look forward to being fully and completely vindicated."
"I am a fervent supporter of the president," he added, vowing to never testify against the president or pleading guilty to the charges.
He was released on a $250,000 bond.
The arrest comes as the White House is reportedly preparing a draft emergency declaration that would allow Donald Trump to circumvent Congress if lawmakers do not fund his southern border wall.
The president effectively announced an end to the government shutdown on its 35th day on Friday, agreeing to a temporary resolution that would open shuttered federal agencies for three weeks as negotiations over the border wall remain ongoing.
The move arrived a day after a bill backed by Mr Trump to end the shutdown, which included $5.7 billion he wanted for the wall, and a separate bill supported by Democrats to reopen federal agencies without such funding, did not garner the votes required to advance in the Senate.
“We do not need 2,000 miles of concrete wall from sea to shining sea, we never did,” Mr Trump said at one point, walking back vows he made throughout the campaign to build a wall sprawling the entirety of the US-Mexico border.
He added, “We never proposed that. We never wanted that, because we have barriers at the border where natural structures are as good as anything that we can build“.
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Mr Kushner’s clearance level provided him access to some of the nation’s top secrets at a time when investigators and clearance experts warned his family’s massive international business debts and the senior adviser’s previously unreported contacts with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential election could make him a security risk embedded in the West Wing.
One of the most major components to the Roger Stone indictment is that he was “contacted by senior campaign officials to inquire about future releases” of the emails and materials Wikileaks stole throughout the course of the 2016 presidential election.
Roger Stone’s lawyer, Grant Smith, has released the following statement:
"They found no Russian collusion or they would have charged him with it. Roger Stone is vindicated by the fact there was no Russian collusion."
He added the misstatements his client made were “immaterial” and allegedly due to forgetfulness.
It remains unclear exactly who the “high-ranking Trump official” was that Roger Stone communicated with about the Wikileaks dumps, but reporting indicates it could be Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist.
The New York Times previously reported the email exchange included in the indictment was between Stone and Mr Bannon.
In a phone interview with Washington Post, Rudy Giuliani says the president is “not nervous about the Stone indictment.”
The FBI reportedly received warrant to search Roger Stone’s New York residence as well, according to Kristin Davis, who told CNN she shared a duplex with the president’s former longtime confidant.
She said she received a call from the agency at 6:00 a.m. to let her know they were at the door and received a warrant to search her home, though she wasn’t there.
Roger Stone is an avid and influential member of the most far-right corners of the political sphere and internet, serving as a frequent guest on Infowars and regularly posting on “The Donald” subreddit.
Roger Stone is in a Fort Lauderdale courtroom in Florida, where the gallery is packed.
He has on a blue shirt and appears to have unkept hair.
Roger Stone has appeared in court and was advised he has restricted travel to the eastern district of DC and Virginia, south Florida and New York. He was released on a $250,000 signature bond.
The court appearance was brief, lasting maybe a total of ten minutes.
Videos showing the moment Donald Trump called on Russia to locate Hillary Clinton’s supposedly missing emails have gone viral (once again) after the indictment stated Roger Stone was contacted by a senior Trump campaign official over damaging information surrounding the Clinton campaign.
The contact was made on 22 July, 2016. The future-president made the public plea to Russia just five days later.
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