Roger Stone accused of trying to buy off Trump-Russia witness
Roger Stone may have a whole new problem. It’s bad enough for him that countless people from his professional and personal life have been hauled before Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia grand jury, which strongly hints that Mueller is going to have Stone indicted and arrested. Now one of those witnesses is accusing Stone of having tried to buy off his grand jury testimony.
Last year Roger Stone testified to Congress that his backchannel to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks was his former friend Randy Credico. When this became public, it set Credico’s life on fire and cost him his job. Credico began publicly refuting Stone’s claim. Now Credico is telling Mother Jones that Stone privately offered to help cover his legal costs if he went along with Stone’s version of the story. Paying the legal bills of an alleged co-conspirator is legal on its own. But specifically asking a witness to lie in exchange for that payoff is an entirely different story.
Randy Credico is already asserting that he was not Roger Stone’s backchannel, and he’s also asserting that Stone tried to pay him to falsely claim that he was Stone’s backchannel. That would represent a serious crime on Stone’s part. On the other hand, if Credico really was Stone’s backchannel, and Stone was merely trying to get Credico to tell the truth, that would not be a crime on Stone’s part.
So now it comes down to which of these two men is telling the truth, and that’s going to be for judges and juries to sort out. But if Randy Credico’s claims can be substantiated, it would mean that Robert Mueller can indict Roger Stone on charges of trying to buy off a witness, in addition to everything else he’s looking to indict him for. Credico has also previously asserted that Stone threatened to murder him and kidnap his dog if he testified.
