Roger Stone Trial To Resume With Focus On Trump Campaign And WikiLeaks

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The federal trial of political trickster Roger Stone is set to resume Tuesday as former Trump campaign staffer Rick Gates is expected to testify for the prosecution and the focus returns to calls Stone made to members of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s election operation.

Former Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon told the federal jury in Washington last week that Stone was seen as an “access point” to WikiLeaks, with knowledge about the release of hacked emails damaging to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. But Bannon said he never asked Stone to contact WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, nor was he aware of anyone else on the campaign reaching out to the anti-secrecy group.

Stone, 67, has pleaded not guilty to lying to Congress about his efforts to learn more about WikiLeaks’ releases that could harm Trump’s political rival Clinton and to tampering with a witness also called by Congress by trying to get him not to contradict Stone’s testimony.

According to Stone’s indictment, “a senior Trump Campaign official” who has not been named in the trial was directed to contact Stone about future WikiLeaks releases after an initial release of hacked Democratic emails. Prosecutors in opening statements last week told the jury they will hear at trial from Gates, who was Trump’s deputy campaign manager as the releases occurred.

Gates has been a cooperating witness in proceedings that grew from special counsel Robert Mueller’s now concluded probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. In a court filing Monday, prosecutors asked that a judge set sentencing for Gates in mid-December, a sign his cooperation may be drawing to a close after his 2018 plea, in one of the Mueller investigation’s spin offs, to conspiracy and lying to the FBI about his work about six years earlier for a political party in Ukraine.

Gates worked with the Trump campaign until Election Day and joined the inaugural committee.

The central finding of Mueller’s investigation is that Moscow had a primary role in sweeping and systemic cyberinterference in the 2016 campaign, including stealing and releasing emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman.

On a timeline shown the first day of trial, former FBI agent Michelle Taylor highlighted a series of calls on the phones of Gates, Trump and Stone in late July 2016. The calls – whose content is not known to investigators, Taylor said – came during the same week Stone emailed campaign chairman Paul Manafort that he had an idea to “save Trump’s a–” and as Stone allegedly was emailing an acquaintance for help in making an approach in London to Assange to ask about any upcoming WikiLeaks dumps.

Manafort was convicted last year on unrelated financial crimes and is in prison.

The witness Stone is accused of trying to intimidate – radio host and comedian Randy Credico – testified for two days last week about his conversations with Stone regarding WikiLeaks and the pressure his old friend put on him to stonewall the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe. Stone, Credico testified, made him his “patsy” by threatening his reputation and that of a close friend.

“I can’t work on his level,” Credico testified. “He plays hardball; he throws a lot of junk, and I didn’t want to get hit.”

Ultimately Credico refused to testify before Congress, invoking his Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination.

Stone’s lies and Credico’s silence, Taylor testified in the trial before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, kept the House committee from being able to contradict Stone’s claim that he had no records of communications with WikiLeaks.

Through his attorneys. Stone has argued that he did not intend to lie to Congress and that the supposed contacts with WikiLeaks they were investigating amounted to “made up stuff” among a pack of braggarts, including Stone.

Under cross-examination, Bannon confirmed that the WikiLeaks emails were “not a high priority” for him.

Before WikiLeaks’ release of emails in October 2016, the strategist added, he expected the impact of a disclosure to be “marginally helpful” in “hurting Hillary Clinton and helping Trump.”

(c) 2019, The Washington Post · Rachel Weiner

{Matzav.com}


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