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“.
Read below for our live coverage on the latest indictment from the special counsel
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Donald Trump has tweeted the following message as Roger Stone was appearing in court to accept charges for his arrest on Friday morning:
“Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country! NO COLLUSION! Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers are treated better. Who alerted CNN to be there?”
The indictment makes it abundantly clear who the Special Counsel is referring to by the head of “Organization 1.”
Hint: It’s Julian Assange.
Take for example this passage: “The head of Organization 1 was located at all relevant times at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, United Kingdom.”
As Donald Trump continues referring to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as a “witch-hunt,” let’s quickly recap its findings:
The probe has resulted in 199 overall criminal counts.
Of those, 37 people and entities have been charged.
At least seven people have already pled guilty.
One person has been convicted in a trial.
Meanwhile, four others have been sentenced to prison.
Roger Stone is expected to provide a statement outside of the courthouse in Florida momentarily.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has responded to the Roger Stone indictment, telling reporters, “It's very interesting to see the kinds of people the President of the United States surrounds himself with."
Roger Stone has provided a statement that there is "no circumstance" he will plead guilty.
The president's former aide said he intends to go to the trial in Washington.
The indictment provides an inside look at how Donald Trump’s inner circle was corresponding about the messaging he would take on at rallies days before he unleashed the controversial remarks.
For example, a couple of weeks before Mr Trump was hurling conspiracies about Hillary Clinton’s health, Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi were discussing how to begin instigating the theory that the Democratic presidential candidate was suffering from a supposed illness.
“I will defeat them in court,” Roger Stone has said about the charges against him, adding, “I am troubled by the political motivations of the prosecutors.”
“I look forward to being fully and completely vindicated,” he added.
“I am a fervent supporter of the president,” Roger Stone continued, discussing his intention to fight the charges against him in a Washington courthouse.
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