The Senate intelligence committee has asked to interview Roger Stone, Donald Trump’s longtime political adviser and self-described dirty trickster.
Stone’s lawyer, Grant Smith, told The Daily Beast that the committee last week sent them an email with a list of search terms for communications to use to determine which electronic communications to turn over to the Senate Intelligence Committee. At the same time, according to Smith, the committee said its members would like to question Stone after receiving the documents. Smith said the process has been amicable and that the interview date has not yet been set.
Stone told The Daily Beast he hopes the interview with the committee will be public, and said he has “already begun to think about what to wear.”
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Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Stone, in emails written to an associate of WikiLeaks founder-slash-embassy crasher Julian Assange, had solicited “damaging” information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the late stages of the 2016 presidential campaign. That appears to be inconsistent with his September testimony before the House intelligence committee, when he said he “merely wanted confirmation” of Assange having dirt on Trump’s political opponent.
Stone has become a central focus for investigators looking into potential coordination between President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin. On May 20 on NBC’s Meet the Press, he said he is ready for Special Counsel Bob Mueller to indict him.
“I am prepared, should that be the case,” he said. “But I think it just demonstrates, again, this was supposed to be about Russian collusion, and it appears to be an effort to silence or punish the president’s supporters and his advocates.” Stone raised eyebrows when he appeared to predict the release of emails hacked from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. Stone also reportedly told the House intelligence committee that radio host Randy Credico was his backchannel to Assange. Credico told The Daily Beast that wasn’t true.
In March, Stone told CNN that the Senate committee asked him to preserve any documents that could be related to its probe. And former Trump aide Sam Nunberg told CNN in May that the committee asked him to turn over communications with Stone about Wikileaks and other topics.
