On Friday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office asked for the official House Intelligence Committee transcript of its September 2017 interview with Roger Stone, a move The Washington Post says could mean an indictment is imminent.
Stone, who has advised Trump on and off for decades and was in contact with the candidate during the 2016 campaign, has been a focus of the special counsel as Mueller probes whether the Trump campaign had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’s release of Democratic emails allegedly hacked by Russian operatives.
Securing an official transcript from the committee would be a necessary step before pursuing an indictment that Stone allegedly lied to lawmakers, legal experts said.
The special counsel could use the threat of a false-statement charge to seek cooperation from Stone, as Mueller has done with other Trump advisers, such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn and longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.
Stone remains defiant.
“I don’t think any reasonable attorney who looks at it would conclude that I committed perjury, which requires intent and materiality,” Stone said.
For weeks, the special counsel’s office has had access to an unofficial copy of Stone’s closed-door September 2017 interview, according to people with knowledge of the process. Mueller’s request of the official copy signals the special counsel could now be pursuing an indictment, several legal experts said.
The House Intelligence Committee, which has provided testimony of its witnesses to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a declassification review, has not yet turned over the official Stone transcript to Mueller, according to the people with knowledge of the situation.
The committee is expected to discuss the topic at a closed-door business session scheduled for Thursday, according to one person familiar with committee plans. An agenda for the meeting posted online shows the panel’s first item to consider is the “Transmission of Certain Executive Session Materials to the Executive Branch.”
The committee’s incoming chairman, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who takes over from Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) next month, has made it clear that he believes the committee should provide the special counsel with the Stone document.
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In written questions posed to the president earlier this year, Mueller sought information from Trump about his interactions with Stone and whether they discussed WikiLeaks.
According to people familiar with Trump’s responses, the president said he had no prior knowledge of what the group was going to do and that Stone did not tell him about WikiLeaks’s plans.
In recent days, however, Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani was less definitive.
“Did Roger Stone ever give the president a heads-up on WikiLeaks’s leaks concerning Hillary Clinton and the DNC?” ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos asked him Sunday.
“No, I don’t believe so,” Giuliani said. “But again, if Roger Stone gave anybody a heads-up about WikiLeaks’s leaks, that’s not a crime . . . collusion is not a crime.”