Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone indicted by special counsel in Russia investigation
WASHINGTON POST

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III unveiled criminal charges Friday against Roger Stone, a longtime friend of President Trump, accusing him of lying, obstruction and witness tampering in one of the longest legal sagas of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In charging Stone, Mueller has struck deep inside Trump’s inner circle. The indictment charges that Stone, a seasoned Republican political operative, sought to gather information about hacked Democratic emails at the direction of an unidentified senior Trump campaign official and engaged in extensive efforts to keep secret the details of those actions.

The 24-page document goes further than Mueller ever has toward answering the core question of his probe: Did Trump or those close to him try to conspire with the Kremlin? The indictment notes that before Stone’s alleged actions in the summer of 2016, the Democratic National Committee already announced it had been hacked by Russian government operatives, implying Stone must have known that.

It does not allege Stone conspired with anyone, but suggests his mission was to find out how the stolen material would be made public — something that, on its own, would not necessarily constitute a crime.

Indicting Stone caps one of the special counsel’s longest pursuits since its creation in May 2017, but it remains uncertain if Mueller is nearing the end of his investigation.

After the early morning arrest at his home Florida home, Stone appeared briefly in federal court in Fort Lauderdale wearing a navy blue polo shirt, jeans and steel shackles on his wrists and ankles. The judge ordered him released on a $250,000 bond.