Longtime Donald Trump associate and self-described dirty trickster Roger Stone said that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election and charged that Democratic leaders unfairly accused him of collusion in a statement released hours before his Tuesday testimony before the House Intelligence Committee.
The 47-page document is pure Stone: a combative, bomb-throwing screed that insists the “mantra-like repetition” that Russia carried out an influence campaign to swing the election to Trump “does not make it so.”
He writes that it is instead, like the allegations against him, a combination of “conjecture, supposition, projection, allegation, and coincidence, none of it proven by evidence of fact.”
Stone adamantly denies the main charges against him: that he had advance knowledge that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails would be hacked and that WikiLeaks would release thousands of hacked emails from Podesta; and that he obtained damaging information from a hacker believed to be a creation of Russian intelligence in a Twitter exchange.
He asks for apologies from Clinton, House Intelligence Committee vice chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and other top Democrats for repeatedly tying him to the Russia investigation in public appearances, amending his statement with news clippings documenting their comments.
A besuited Stone arrived on Capitol Hill just after 9 a.m. Tuesday, accompanied by his two attorneys, and proceeded directly into chamber where he was slated to meet with the committee. For once he had little to say, telling reporters gathered outside only that he planned “to tell the truth and nothing but the truth.”
Read Stone’s full statement below: