WASHINGTON — Roger Stone, the political consultant who served as informal adviser to the Trump campaign, said it is “conceivable” that special counsel Robert Mueller will “bring some bogus charge against me,” but he can’t think of any circumstance in which he’d testify against President Donald Trump.
In an interview with Variety‘s “PopPolitics” on SiriusXM’s political channel POTUS, Stone said, “it is possible the special counsel could bring an action against me that is designed to make me testify against Donald Trump, who I have known on an intimate basis for almost 40 years.”
He added, “I do not work in the Trump White House. There are some things he has done as president that I do not agree with, and other things that he has done as president that I do agree with. But that said, I can’t think of any circumstance under which I would be willing to testify against him.”
Stone was interviewed on Thursday, the day before Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, pled guilty to the remaining charges he is facing regarding his consulting work for the government of Ukraine, spanning from 2006 to 2017. Manafort was Stone’s business partner in a Washington lobbying firm.
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Stone said Mueller has interviewed “as many as 12 of my current and former associates,” but he himself has not been contacted.
He did testify before a closed session before the House Intelligence Committee last year, and was queried about statements he made in 2016 that seemed to indicate that he had contact with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and foreknowledge of the release of hacked emails.
Stone, though, denies that he had any advance knowledge.
“They have dragged at least five, I think more, of my current associates in front of the grand jury. Here’s what I can absolutely guarantee you,” Stone said. “They will find no evidence of Russian collusion. They will find no evidence of Wikileaks collaboration. They will find no evidence … that I knew anything in advance of acquisition and the release of John Podesta’s emails. The things simply don’t exist.”
A clip of Stone is featured in the new documentary “Active Measures,” in a scene from August 2016, in which he tells the Broward Republican Organization that he had “communicated with Assange.”
Stone was not interviewed for the documentary, but said what he meant by the remark was that he had an intermediary.
“I was told by the New York radio personality Randy Credico, when Assange went on CNN in June of 2016, and said that he had a treasure trove of documents on Hillary Clinton and that he would release them,” Stone said.
“Now Mr. Credico never told me the source of those documents and the content of them, only that they existed and would roil the presidential race, and they did,” Stone said.
Credico, who has been an advocate for Assange, spoke to the Mueller grand jury last week, and told MSNBC, “most of the questions were about Roger Stone.” He said Assange came up “peripherally.” He declined to get into specifics of what was the subject matter of the questions about Stone.
Stone said, “should it come to it, I can prove that I never had any direct contact with Julian Assange in 2016 and I never received any allegedly hacked emails.”
“I think it is possible that I will be framed, but I have no idea,” he added. “It is very clear how the system works. You find a low-level person who has done something wrong, and then you squeeze them to bear false witness against a bigger fish.”
He said he had “serious questions about the constitutional authority of Mr. Mueller.”
“I also have problems with a number of these prosecutors in terms of their personal bias or the nature of their appointment, and those questions will all get raised at an appropriate time if they are foolish enough to bringing an action against me,” he said. “I have no intention of just bending over. That I can assure you.”
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