Roger Stone Refuses To Provide Documents, Interview With Judiciary Committee: Lawyer
Roger Stone, a longtime associate and friend of President Donald Trump, said through his lawyer Tuesday that he would not cooperate with the Senate Judiciary’s request for documents or an interview.
Stone also declined to provide lawmakers with documents related to “communications related to hacked emails, communications with Russian hackers of Wikileaks, and communications with the Trump campaign,” during the 2016 presidential election, a request that Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) made last month.
Roger Stone’s attorney sent a letter this week stating Stone won’t provide documents or appear for an interview before the committee. https://t.co/csC3TG1BPH pic.twitter.com/oRbpE0qjEw
— Sen Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) December 4, 2018
“On the advice of counsel, Mr. Stone will not produce the documents requested by you in your capacity as Ranking Minority Member of the Judiciary Committee,” attorney Grant J. Smith said in an emailed statement to Feinstein. Smith called the requests “far too overbroad, far too overreaching, far too wide-ranging both in their all-embracing list of” those Stone has communicated with over the past three years.
The response comes just days after Trump’s former longtime attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a Russian real estate deal he made during Trump’s campaign. Trump called Cohen a “weak person” then praised Stone in a tweet for not testifying against him and instead invoking the Fifth Amendment.
“I will never testify against Trump.” This statement was recently made by Roger Stone, essentially stating that he will not be forced by a rogue and out of control prosecutor to make up lies and stories about “President Trump.” Nice to know that some people still have “guts!”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2018
The Washington Post spoke to several law experts who suggested the tweet could be a clear indication of witness tampering and obstruction of justice.
Trump previously compared those who took the Fifth to those in “the mob.”
“If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment,” Trump said in his attacks then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, referring to her aides who faced questions over the use of a private email service when she was secretary of state. “The mob takes the fifth,” he added.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
