Stone Jury to Begin Deliberations Thursday After Weeklong Trial

(Bloomberg) -- A jury in Roger Stone’s trial is to begin deliberations Thursday after hearing final arguments from prosecutors who portrayed President Donald Trump’s longtime ally as a liar who misled Congress in an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Lawyers for Stone urged the jury to acquit him, arguing that he had no motive to lie when testifying before Congress long after Trump won the presidency.

The weeklong trial resurrected the issue of the Trump campaign’s connections with Russia, WikiLeaks and the dissemination of emails stolen in 2016 from Democrats -- something that has been sidelined by the current impeachment hearings focusing on Ukraine.

At the trial’s end Wednesday the jury heard diametrically opposing portraits of the witness testimony and evidence presented.

Stone lied, prosecutor Jonathan Kravis said, because if he told the truth, “it would look really bad to his longtime associate, Donald Trump” in the context of the ongoing investigations.

Stone appeared voluntarily before the House Intelligence Committee in September 2017. The panel took interest in Stone because of his frequent public comments during the campaign indicating he had inside information about WikiLeaks’ release of documents stolen from Democratic Party computers by Russian military intelligence agents, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Marando said in court.

WikiLeaks’ publication of tens of thousands of those stolen documents partly helped Trump defeat his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Special Counsel Robert Mueller undertook a criminal investigation parallel to the one in the House that ultimately led to Stone’s indictment in January.

Stone’s lawyer Bruce Rogow disputed prosecutors’ assertion that his client was trying to protect the president, arguing the matter of the election was settled with Trump as the victor.

Stone had no reason to cover up conversations about WikiLeaks because they weren’t illegal, he said.

Citing the trial testimony of Trump’s campaign chief Steve Bannon and top aide Rick Gates, the defense lawyer said campaigns look for opposition information all the time.

“There was no purpose for Stone to have to lie to protect the campaign because the campaign was doing nothing wrong,” Rogow said.

Seven Counts

Stone, 67, is charged with seven criminal counts. Each of the five false-statement counts he faces carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison as does an obstruction charge. He’s also charged with witness tampering, which is punishable by as long as 20 years. As a first-time criminal offender, Stone would likely get a sentence far below those maximums if convicted on any of the counts.

The jury got a recap of the information it had been shown and testimony it heard from Kravis, who did it in a rapid fashion in about an hour.

The prosecutor said Stone had mislead the committee about the identity of an intermediary he used to gain information from WikiLeaks.

Stone also concealed text and email exchanges with the person Kravis said was the true go-between -- conservative author Jerome Corsi. Instead, Stone told the committee that New York radio personality and comedian Randy Credico was the only source for his information about WikiLeaks’ plans to release the stolen documents. But he withheld from the committee emails and texts that showed otherwise, Kravis said.

Stone told the committee his source spoke only on the phone and wasn’t “an email guy.” That was “a whopper” of a lie, Kravis said, citing a vast number of messages between Stone and Credico.

Stone is also accused of threatening and cajoling Credico to either lie to the committee or to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, playing on his vulnerabilities including his history of alcoholism.

“Stone was messing with Credico’s head, right off the break,” urging him to mimic Frank Pentangeli in the 1974 film “The Godfather II.” In the film, Pentangeli is called before a 1950s U.S. Senate panel to testify about organized crime, but professes to remember little and says he gave a false confession to investigators.

While the Stone-Credico message traffic was littered with the Godfather references, Rogow invoked an even older film, 1967’s “Cool Hand Luke.”

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate,” Rogow said, referencing one of the more memorable lines from the film starring Paul Newman.

Rogow also accused Credico of deceiving Stone about his own inside track on WikiLeaks, its lawyer and his friend, Margaret Kunstler.

“There is no question Randy Credico played Roger Stone,” Rogow said, a premise Marando took issue with.

“Are you kidding me?” the prosecutor asked. Referring to Credico’s demeanor and appearance during his time on the witness stand, Marando said, “Did that look like a mastermind to you?”

Arguing “the truth still matters” in American institutions, if not on social media, Marando concluded by asking the jury to find Stone guilty on all counts.

The case is U.S. v. Stone, 19-cr-18, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Harris in Washington at aharris16@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider, Steve Stroth

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.