For months, Roger Stone has been predicting his indictment by Robert Mueller. “It is not inconceivable now that Mr. Mueller and his team may seek to conjure up some extraneous crime pertaining to my business, or maybe not even pertaining to the 2016 election,” he told Meet the Press in May. At least eight of his current or former associates had been “terrorized” by the special counsel’s office, he claimed. In an August e-mail to supporters, urging them to help fund his legal defense, he sounded resigned to his fate. “Robert Mueller is coming for me,” he wrote.
Stone, a longtime Republican operative who has worked with Paul Manafort and advised Donald Trump, remains a free man. But as the midterms approach and Mueller prepares to re-enter the spotlight, a flurry of activity inside the special counsel’s office suggests that Stone’s “time in the barrel,” as he memorably said of John Podesta, may finally be at hand. In recent weeks, federal prosecutors have interviewed nearly a dozen Stone associates, a number of whom have testified before a grand jury. They have also interviewed Manafort, who recently cut a plea deal with the special counsel, about his former colleague. According to multiple reports, investigators are interested in whether Stone’s communications with WikiLeaks and the Russian hacker known as “Guccifer 2.0,” who allegedly hacked the Clinton campaign, constitute a criminal conspiracy.
At issue is whether Stone or other Trump associates had prior knowledge of WikiLeaks’s plans to release the thousands of e-mails obtained by the Russians, or whether they coordinated their efforts in any way. Stone, for his part, has long maintained that he knew nothing of the e-mail dumps himself, despite his August 2016 boast about communicating with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his subsequent prediction that Podesta—Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager—would be their next target. When Podesta’s hacked e-mails were indeed leaked, some six weeks later, Stone immediately came under suspicion. Throughout October, the self-described “dirty trickster” continued to make predictions about future WikiLeaks e-mail dumps, hinting often at an “October surprise.”
Stone has since downplayed his ties to WikiLeaks, insisting that he never actually spoke with Assange, and that his real source was radio personality Randy Credico. The supposed prophecy regarding Podesta, Stone later claimed, was also a reference to his brother, Tony Podesta, a well-known Democratic lobbyist.
Stone’s account puts him at odds with Credico, who has denied that he acted as the intermediary between WikiLeaks and Stone. Credico allies told The Washington Post that he believes Stone has set him up as a “decoy.” Of course, both men have an incentive to blame the other. According to a person familiar with the matter, Credico has testified before a grand jury that Stone told him about his back channel to WikiLeaks. But two Stone associates, filmmaker David Lugo and attorney Tyler Nixon, said Credico has acknowledged that he was Stone’s source. In text messages Lugo provided to the Post, Credico wrote, “I knew Rodger [sic] was going to name me sooner or later and so I told you that I’m the so-called back Channel.”
The stakes are high for Stone as Mueller seeks to disentangle the conflicting claims. During his September 2017 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Stone claimed he had “never said or written” that he had any direct communications with Assange, and that any of his communications with WikiLeaks were through Credico. Stone’s phrasing may have been deliberately unclear. But if Credico’s account is truthful, then Stone may have perjured himself.
It is a federal crime to “knowingly and willfully” provide “materially” false statements to Congress—even if one is not under oath. If Stone is determined to have misled lawmakers about his contacts with WikiLeaks and Assange, he could face up to five years in prison. And notably, Stone wouldn’t be the first individual to get saddled with this charge as part of a special-counsel investigation. John M. Poindexter, who served as the national-security adviser to President Ronald Reagan, was sentenced to prison for lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, though the conviction was later overturned. More recently, Mueller has leveraged false statements by Mike Flynn, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos to gain their cooperation. If the special counsel is still working his way up the food chain, as the White House fears, then he may be seeking to flip Stone next.
Stone, for his part, has said he will never turn on Trump. “The special counsel pokes into every aspect of my social, family, personal, business, and political life, seeking something—anything—he can use to pressure me, to silence me, and to try to induce me to testify against my friend Donald Trump,” he told the Post. “This I will not do. When I say I won’t roll on the president, what I mean is I will not be forced to make up lies to bring him down.” The strength of that assertion may suggest Stone is holding open the door for a presidential pardon if things go south. Or perhaps Stone is simply taking his cue from Manafort when it comes to dealing with the special counsel, and waiting until the last moment to cave.
