Roger Stone, a former adviser to Donald Trump’s campaign, is claiming he will never turn on the president – unlike others.
‘I will never roll on Donald Trump,’ Stone announced Monday night during a speech before Trump Club 45, one of South Florida’s largest political groups, according to the Florida Sun-Sentinel.
He fretted that he could be indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and said if he is it would be ‘an extraneous crime’ that has nothing to do with Russia.
Roger Stone with Citizens For Restoring USA founder Robert Kiger at the Palm Beach Kennel Club in Wast Palm Beach, Florida.
Roger Stone speaks during the Mother of All Rallies at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in early Septmeber
He also argued everyone commits inadvertent felonies and repeated the old joke that prosecutors can get grand juries to do anything – even indict a ham sandwich.
His vow of loyalty indicates even if he is indicted, he will not cut a deal with prosecutors as Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, did when he pleaded guilty to eight count, including one campaign finance violation.
‘Michael Cohen I am not,’ Stone noted, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Cohen made a similar vow before he cut a deal, famously saying he would take a bullet for Trump if needed.
Trump slammed his former attorney for ‘flipping’ but has expressed sympathy for his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was convicted on eight counts – on the same day Cohen cut his deal – and then cut a deal himself in exchange for avoiding a second federal trial.
The president said Wednesday of Manafort: ‘I believe that he will tell the truth. And if he tells the truth, no problem.’
At least 12 current or former Stone associates have been interviewed by the FBI or Mueller’s team. At least eight have appeared before a federal grand jury, Stone says.
He claimed the FBI ‘tried to question my cleaning lady and FBI agents have been sifting through my garbage. Here’s what I can tell you: They will find no evidence of Russian collusion,’ he said.
He added: ‘I don’t drink Russian vodka. I don’t take Russian dressing on my salads.’
Stone left the Trump campaign on in August 2015 but a report he met with a Russian national during his time with Trump had drawn the prosecutors’ interest.
In June of this year, The Washington Post quoted Stone as saying he met with a Russian man during the presidential campaign who wanted $2 million in exchange for damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
Stone met with the man in May 2016 in Florida, which was set up by Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo.
Stone said he rejected the man’s offer.
‘You don’t understand Donald Trump,’ Stone said he told the man. ‘He doesn’t pay for anything.’
Stone told Caputo the meeting was ‘a waste of time.’
Mueller is investigating the meeting, Caputo told the Post, and noted prosecutors asked him about it last month.
Both Stone and Caputo allege the man, who called himself Henry Greenberg, was an FBI informant.
‘If you believe that [Greenberg] took time off from his long career as an FBI informant to reach out to us in his spare time, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I want to sell you,’ Caputo told the newspaper.
President Trump criticized his former lawyer Michael Cohen for flipping
Michael Cohen once said he’d take a bullet for Trump
Former campaign manager Paul Manafort also cut a deal with prosecutors but Trump has not slammed him for it
Stone said: ‘I didn’t realize it was an FBI sting operation at the time, but it sure looks like one now.’
Records do not indicate that Greenberg – a Russian national – was an FBI informant, The Post reported. The documents do show he worked as informant in the past but stopped doing so after 2013.
Greenberg denied to The Post that he was working on behalf of the FBI during the meeting.
Stone is a longtime creature of Washington, having advised Republican politicians going back to Richard Nixon. At one point Stone had a lobbying business with Manafort.
Stone has been called a ‘political dirty trickster’ for some of his tough tactics.
During his remarks in Palm Beach on Monday, he was insistent, as Trump has been, that there was no collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign.
‘There is one narrative that holds that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to affect the outcome of the election. Let me say a word about that: It’s bulls***,’ Stone said.
And he echoed Trump that the collusion charge was an attempt by the Justice Department and FBI – then under President Barack Obama – to spy on the Trump campaign, which he called ‘far worse than Watergate.’