Charged with one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering, President Donald Trump’s former political advisor Roger Stone was arrested Friday morning at his home in Florida. In addition to physically threatening a witness during a federal investigation, Stone’s emails also revealed that he threatened to abduct the witness’s dog if he continued to cooperate with prosecutors.
Shortly before dawn on Friday, FBI agents arrested Stone at his residence in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Due to the fact that federal prosecutors considered Stone as a possible flight risk or might tamper with evidence, details of his case remained sealed before his sudden arrest.
According to the Office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Stone lied about the existence of records and failed to turn over evidence to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Stone also allegedly gave false testimony during an HPSCI hearing in September 2017 before tampering with a federal witness by delivering multiple threats via text message and emails.
On December 24, 2017, Randy Credico, a New York radio host who had interviewed Julian Assange, sent a text message to Stone suggesting that they should be honest with the FBI after Stone made false statements to the HPSCI hearing. Two minutes later, Stone replied, “I’m not talking to the FBI and if your smart you won’t either.”
On April 9, 2018, Stone sent an email to Credico saying, “You are a rat. A stoolie. You backstab your friends-run your mouth my lawyers are dying Rip you to shreds.” Stone also allegedly threatened to abduct Credico’s dog.
On May 21, 2018, Credico wrote in an email to Stone, “
Stone responded, “You are so full of shit. You got nothing. Keep running your mouth and I’ll file a bar complaint against your friend [an attorney with ties to Wikileaks].”
According to the indictment, Stone was in communication with a high-ranking Trump campaign official who has been identified as Steve Bannon. After obtaining information about Wikileaks dumping the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s hacked emails from Credico, Stone allegedly reported the information to Bannon, who was then-chief executive of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Stone also directly communicated with Guccifer 2.0 on Twitter in the weeks before the election when Trump suggested that Russians should hack Hillary Clinton’s emails. Guccifer 2.0 was a pseudonym used by one or more operatives in the Russian intelligence scheme to steal the emails and funnel them to WikiLeaks.
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