Longtime GOP strategist Roger Stone on Tuesday fired back at Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee who have accused the former informal Trump campaign adviser of lying to Congress as part of his testimony for the Russia probe.
“If Congressman Swalwell or Congressman Castro or Congressman Schiff have evidence of Russian collusion or WikiLeaks collaboration on my part let them produce it. They have none,” Stone told Hill.TV on Tuesday, referring to Democrats on the panel.
Stone bemoaned the questioning from lawmakers, claiming it has devolved into “perjury traps or some other highly trumped-up process crime – it’s ridiculous.”
“My testimony before the House Intelligence Committee is completely 100 percent accurate … I’m no longer interested in the frivolous word games, of the parsing of the words, the immaterial or I should say nonmaterial, hairsplitting,” he said.
Moments earlier, Intelligence Committee member Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) told reporters that he believes Stone lied under oath to members of the panel. Schiff, the top Democrat on the panel, has also said Stone could face charges of lying to Congress.
“[Stone] had to update his testimony a number of times,” Swalwell said. “There were glaring omissions of contacts they had that they did not give to us when they were asked about them with Russians.”
Stone and Swalwell found themselves in close proximity on Capitol Hill Tuesday as they both attended the Judiciary Committee’s hearing with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who was fielding questions on the tech giant’s privacy practices.
In the wake of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s recent guilty plea of lying to Congress during testimony before the Intelligence panel, a number of Democrats pointed fingers at other witnesses who may have lied under oath.
Several Democrats told The Hill that some witnesses should be recalled to the committee to test the veracity of their original testimony.
Swalwell signaled Tuesday that when Democrats take control of the panel starting next month, he anticipates sending committee transcripts to special counsel Robert Mueller for his investigation into ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia during the 2016 election.
Mueller has been investigating whether Stone was aware of WikiLeaks’ plans to publish hacked emails from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 election.
“I don’t know that there’s much of am appetite to let witnesses rehabilitate their BS stories – if you lie, and you don’t want to cooperate still, I don’t see why we should allow you to find the wiggle room to get out of that lie,” he said.
Swalwell, a former prosecutor, also noted that once Democrats control the panel they will be able to “subpoena the third-party records – bank records, cell phone records, hotel records – that the Republicans are not willing to do to test the stories, to see if they either check out or if they are contradicted.”
For his part, Stone said he doesn’t “fear anything” – including potentially having transcripts in the hands of the special counsel.
“I don’t fear anything,” Stone said. “Every bit of it is entirely defensible – everything I said was true – but they are the ones who twist my words.”
––Molly Hooper
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