Roger Stone's Lawyers Face Their Biggest Match Next: 12 DC Jurors
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has hit Stone with gag orders and repeatedly chided him from the bench in the lead-up to trial.
November 02, 2019 at 06:00 PM
5 minute read
Roger Stone, a longtime associate of President Donald Trump, is set to go to trial this week in a case that's expected to detail the campaign's contacts with WikiLeaks in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
It's been nine months since Stone's January arrest on charges of lying to Congress and witness tampering. But the build-up to his trial has been far from quiet, as the judge presiding over Stone's case has hit him with gag orders and repeatedly chided him from the bench.
"It seems he is determined to make himself the subject of a story," U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District of Columbia said of Stone during a scathing oral order in July, blocking him from using some social media.
Former federal prosecutors watching the case predicted that Stone's lawyers might deploy a familiar strategy during trial that they tried over the past few months: Make this case about a topic other than the charges against Stone. That's unlikely to go over well with Jackson, whose no-nonsense approach and demeanor has guided much of the pretrial proceedings.
Jackson has largely rejected attempts by Stone's legal team to introduce evidence on matters outside of Stone's charges of lying to Congress and witness tampering. That outside evidence has included cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike's reports on its discovery of Russian hackers breaching the Democratic National Committee's server.
Stone's legal team is led by the Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based attorneys Bruce Rogow and Robert Buschel.
"The maneuvering in the pretrial hearings suggest that the defense is very interested in making this a trial about something other than whether Roger Stone lied to Congress and tried to get other people either to lie or to refuse to testify," said David Sklansky, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Stanford Law School.
"And the judge seems determined to keep the trial focused on the allegations in the indictment," Sklansky added.
Stone is accused of lying to Congress, impeding a congressional investigation and witness tampering, including a charge that he threatened the dog of a now former associate to try and prevent that man from testifying with the House Intelligence Committee.
His trial will start with jury selection Tuesday, with opening statements expected either that day or early the next. The trial is expected to take about two weeks.
Stone pleaded not guilty to the charges, and made it clear from the start that he would fight the allegations. But he's largely lost those pretrial fights.
During a September hearing, Jackson balked at the possibility of Stone's attorneys asking witnesses about how special counsel Robert Mueller conducted his investigation.
"We're not going to try the investigators here, or the investigation," Jackson said at the time.
The trial is also sure to reveal further details about the Trump campaign's contacts with WikiLeaks. Stone claimed to have a back-channel to the group, as well as prior knowledge of released information damaging to Democrats ahead of the 2016 election.
"This was one of the biggest sources of redactions in the Mueller report," said Randall Eliason, a former assistant U.S. attorney for D.C. and a law professor at George Washington University. "We're going to learn some things that were redacted that we've been kind of wondering about."
Former Trump campaign leader and ex-White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, who was purportedly in touch with Stone about the WikiLeaks dumps, is expected to take the stand as a government witness. He's expected to testify about how Stone tried to sell himself to the Trump campaign as having insider access to WikiLeaks.
Former Trump campaign official Rick Gates is also anticipated to testify during the trial. Court filings show that his sentencing, after pleading guilty to fraud-related charges, has been pushed off until after the proceedings are expected to end.
Also set to take the stand is Randy Credico, a former Stone associate who Stone claimed was his backchannel to WikiLeaks. Credico's attorney, Martin Stolar, said last spring that his client received a subpoena to appear on the first day of Stone's trial.
Credico—who was not Stone's alleged WikiLeaks contact—is referenced throughout the indictment. He is the man Stone allegedly threatened over potential testimony to the House Intelligence Committee.
But the other man who played a starring role in Stone's indictment, Jerome Corsi, does not appear likely to appear at the trial. Corsi's attorney, Larry Klayman, has said his client hasn't been subpoenaed or asked to testify.
Stone was the last person to be indicted by Mueller before the special counsel's probe shut down. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia took over the case once Mueller's probe concluded. A pair of Mueller holdovers, Adam Jed and Aaron Zelinsky, have stayed on the case.
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