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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Here's video from Roger Stone's statement outside of the Florida courthouse:
Many people online are pointing to past comments Donald Trump has made in light of Roger Stone’s arrest, including the below tweet in which the president boasts of his former aide’s loyalty as a sign of having “guts” in the midst of the Special Counsel investigation.
Those in Donald Trump’s orbit are strongly asserting the indictment of Roger Stone has nothing to do with Russian collusion.
White House Counsel Jay Sekulow said in a statement on Friday, “The indictment today does not allege Russian collusion by Roger Stone or anyone else. Rather, the indictment focuses on alleged false statements made to Congress.”
Now it appears Roger Stone's Instagram account is encouraging his supporters to buy his shirt, which reads, "Roger Stone did nothing wrong!"
The post arrived shortly after Stone was released on a $250,000 bond after being indicted.
WikiLeaks has retweeted a message from an account called “DefendAssange,” alleging Roger Stone threatened Randy Credico’s dog in an effort to get him to falsely claim they were establishing a back-channel.
The House Intelligence Committee will release all transcripts of interviews in its probe of Russian election interference to the special counsel's office, Democratic Chairman Adam Schiff said on Friday after Roger Stone was charged with lying to Congress.
"This is now the second witness who has been indicted for or plead guilty to making false statements in testimony before our Committee," Schiff said in a statement. "The first order of business for the Committee will be to release all remaining transcripts."
Reuters
CNN has responded to Donald Trump’s Twitter enquiries as to how the network was “alerted” to the Roger Stone indictment this morning.
The outlet’s communications handle said its “ability to capture the arrest of Roger Stone was the result of determined reporting and interpreting clues revealed in the course of events.”
The tweet added, “That’s called journalism.”
Here’s video of Paul Manafort saying in a past interview, “Roger’s relationship with Trump has been so interconnected that it’s hard to define what’s Roger and what’s Donald.”
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee has released the following statement after announcing all transcripts will be released from the committee’s probe and interviews with Trump aides:
“Those who appear before congressional investigators & attempt to mislead us will be held to account. Neither we nor the Special Counsel will tolerate efforts by any person to impede any investigation ... pressure a witness to withhold testimony from or mislead Congress."
Donald Trump is announcing a deal to reopen the federal government. He began by calling the federal employees who have continued working without pay “patriots”.
“You are very, very special people,” He said. “I am so proud that you are citizens of our country.”
The government will be reopened for three weeks, and federal employees will receive backpay “as soon as possible,” the president said.
He called on Mitch McConnell to put the bill up for a vote. He did not mention the Roger Stone indictment.
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