Roger Stone, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, will testify on July 24 in a closed hearing with the House Intelligence Committee as part of the panel’s Russia investigation, Politico and CNN reported Tuesday night.
Stone’s testimony will follow a closed session the House Intelligence Committee had with Hillary Clinton adviser John Podesta on Tuesday.
“I am confident that Podesta most likely repeated his lie that I knew in advance about the hacking of his email, and am anxious to rebut this falsehood,” Stone said in a statement to CNN. “I am still unhappy that my testimony will not be in public, but believe it is more important to resolve the question of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — which I believe was nonexistent.”
Robert Buschel, Stone’s attorney, told Politico that Stone asked for a public hearing but that the committee said they are “done with public” hearings.
“We tried really hard,” Buschel told Politico.
Stone communicated with Guccifer 2.o, a hacker who released DNC emails and who U.S. officials believe is associated with the Russian government, during the 2016 campaign. However, Stone has said that the interaction was “benign” and has insisted that he did not communicate with Russian officials during the campaign.
I bet there will be a lot of i do not recalls.
I’m sure they were just swapping recipes for hors d’oeuvres.
Trey Gowdy (R-SC): "Thank you for being here today, Mr. Stone. It is an honor to have such a distinguished American appear before us.
“I’d like to cut to the chase and get right to the heart of this matter and address what I consider to be the most important issue: Will you show the committee your tattoo?”
No way to follow that. I wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot Lithuanian.
I’m of two minds on the public testimony. 1) It would be interesting to have that snake exposed in a public hearing, but 2) you have more opportunity to get some information from him in a private hearing without all the grandstanding by both Stone and House members. 3) Maybe it doesn’t matter, since it is the House, anyway.
On a related note, what is keeping me up at night is the the following scenario…in 2020, Trump mired in the 30’s approval ratings pulls off a narrow upset victory with the help of the Russian’s hacking tabulating machines and the GOP pulls off several narrow surprise victories to maintain the House and the Senate. The results are highly anomalous and obvious to many to be off, but no smoking guns…who stops Trump from taking office again in 2021? Trump sews enough doubt in polls, exit polls and the media with his idiotic supporters, he still holds the reins of power and the military and a GOP congress won’t do anything… . So…in 3 election cycles we have lost our democracy–possibly forever. This now seems plausible to me.