Who Is Roger Stone? Trump Associate Convicted Of Lying About Contacts With WikiLeaks

A federal jury in Washington Friday convicted Trump associate Roger Stone, a longtime fixture in Republican politics, of lying to Congress and witness tampering in the congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Stone, 67, was convicted by a panel of nine women and three men who deliberated for less than eight hours before convicting him on all seven counts charging him with obstructing a congressional committee and witness tampering as the result of his September 2017 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee.

Stone, who remains free on bond, watched impassively as the verdicts were read. He will be sentenced Feb. 6 by Judge Amy Berman Jackson and could face two decades in prison.

Trump weighed in on the verdict, saying, he and his associates are being held to a “double standard.”

The verdict came in the second day of impeachment hearings to determine whether President Trump abused the power of his office in a bid to pressure Ukraine into investigating political rivals ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Prosecutors made Trump and his 2016 campaign a pillar of their case, alleging Stone lied to investigators, tried to prevent another witness from testifying and concealed documents because revelations would have made Trump and his campaign “look terrible.”

The indictment was obtained by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his investigation into Russia’s actions during the 2016 presidential campaign related to files hacked by Russia and made public by WikiLeaks.

Evidence showed Stone made a series of phone calls during high-ranking Trump campaign officials at key moments in the 2016 contest and worked to obtain emails hacked by Russia from Democratic computers that were released at strategic points in the campaign to hurt Hillary Clinton.

Rick Gates, who served on the campaign, and Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former political strategist, testified they saw Stone as a conduit to WikiLeaks. Gates testified he overheard a phone call between Trump and Stone in which they discussed WikiLeaks, contradicting Trump’s assertion to the Mueller investigation that he remembered no such conversation.

Stone’s attorneys urged jurors to decide whether Stone’s actions really mattered rather than whether he committed a crime since his actions never produced any results. They cast Stone’s claims about connections to WikiLeaks as misstatements.

Stone is the lasted Trump aide to be convicted of lying to federal investigators. The group includes his former fixer and attorney Michael Cohen and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. His former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was convicted of a string of financial crimes that predated his involvement with Trump.

The president decried the verdict, asking why Hillary Clinton and other perceived foes hadn’t been convicted of anything.