Roger Stone made misstatements to Congress because he 'forgot,' his attorney says

Roger Stone.
(Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Roger Stone may have been arrested Friday, but his lawyer says it that doesn't mean he colluded with Russia.

The longtime adviser to President Trump was arrested Friday morning on charges including obstruction of an official proceeding, witness tampering, and making false statements. Some of those false statements were made to Congress, the indictment from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team says. But in what seems to be a concession that Stone did make those misstatements, Stone's alleged lies were actually things he "honestly forgot about," Stone's attorney Grant Smith said in a statement Friday.

See more

Apparently Smith also forgot something: that Stone repeated those supposed misstatements several times outside of congressional testimony. Stone appeared on Meet the Press last May, saying he "received nothing from Wikileaks or from the Russians" and "passed nothing on to Donald Trump or the Trump campaign." He also told C-SPAN last June that he "had no advanced knowledge of the source, content, or the exact disclosure timing of the Wikileaks disclosures."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Those repeated statements directly contradict findings in Mueller's Friday indictment, which say Stone told the Trump campaign he had contacts with WikiLeaks and imply he knew in advance about the publication of stolen Democratic emails ahead of the 2016 election. Read more about what Stone's lawyer contradicted at The Week.

To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Kathryn Krawczyk

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.