MIAMI, Florida., Jan. 25 (UPI) — Roger Stone Jr., a political operative and friend of President Donald Trump, has been indicted on seven criminal charges by special counsel Robert Mueller, including making false statements and witness tampering.
Stone was arrested in Florida early Friday and is expected to appear in a Fort Lauderdale court.
The self-described “dirty trickster” is credited for getting Trump into politics. He’s also been accused of having contact with WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange during the 2016 presidential campaign. Stone has called Assange “my hero” for releasing dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Mueller is examining whether a Russian hacker provided WikiLeaks with damaging information about Clinton that was ultimately passed on to Trump’s campaign through Stone. The operative worked briefly for the Trump campaign in 2015 and continued to work for him on an informal basis.
Stone told ABC News in July he was the member of Trump’s campaign who corresponded with hackers from the group Guccifer 2.0, which hacked Clinton’s emails. The Democratic National Committee became aware that their computer systems had been hacked in May 2016.
In the lead-up to the election, tranches of documents were released that had been stolen from the personal email account of the Clinton campaign’s chairman. In all, 50,000 documents were stolen.
Stone has denied having knowledge that Russians were behind the account.
