Roger Stone Is Found Guilty in Trial That Revived Trump-Russia Saga

Testimony by Rick Gates, Mr. Trump’s deputy campaign chairman, called into question Mr. Trump’s answers to queries from Mr. Mueller. Mr. Trump, who agreed to respond to questions only in writing rather than sit for an interview, said he could not recall the specifics of any of 21 conversations he had with Mr. Stone in the six months before the election. Mr. Stone told House investigators that he never discussed his conversations with an intermediary to WikiLeaks with anyone involved in the Trump campaign.

But in one of the trial’s most revealing moments, Mr. Gates recounted a July 31, 2016, phone call between Mr. Stone and Mr. Trump, just days after WikiLeaks had released a trove of emails embarrassing the Clinton campaign. As soon as he hung up with Mr. Stone, Mr. Gates testified, Mr. Trump declared that “more information” was coming, an apparent reference to future releases from WikiLeaks that would rattle his political rival.

Mr. Stone, 67, joins a notable list of former Trump aides convicted of lying to federal authorities. It includes Mr. Gates; Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser; Michael D. Cohen, the president’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, and George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide. And his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was also once Mr. Stone’s partner in a political consulting firm, was convicted of a string of financial crimes and is serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison term.

The most serious charges against Mr. Stone, obstruction of justice and witness tampering, carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison each. Five counts of false statements each carry a maximum of five years. But the punishment for a first-time offender like Mr. Stone will almost certainly be much lighter.

Working against him could be his multiple run-ins earlier this year with Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is overseeing the case and will preside over sentencing, set for Feb. 6. After a series of infractions, including posting a photo of the judge with an image of cross-hairs next to her head on Instagram in February, she banned him from social media.

During the trial, Mr. Stone was noticeably subdued, betraying no reaction to the testimony and rarely engaging even with his own legal team. On Twitter, his daughter Adria complained that the jury pool seemed stacked against her father and President Trump.

His lawyers argued that the prosecution’s case was based on speculation and false assumptions about Mr. Stone’s motives. They pointed out that Mr. Gates had no knowledge about what was said during the phone call between Mr. Stone and Mr. Trump. Bruce S. Rogow, the lead defense lawyer, told jurors that Mr. Stone had no reason to lie in order to protect the president nearly a year after Mr. Trump had won the election and that Mr. Stone had simply confined his answers to the strict parameters of the committee’s inquiry, he said.



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