Chuck Ross on February 21, 2019
Roger Stone admitted to making an “egregious, stupid error” on Thursday during a court hearing in which the longtime Trump confidant unexpectedly took the witness stand.
Stone apologized over a graphic he posted to his Instagram account on Monday which depicted the judge handling his case, Amy Berman Jackson, placed in front of what appeared to be a set of crosshairs.
Stone quickly removed the post after public backlash and submitted a formal apology to the court. Jackson called the next day for a hearing to discuss the post and whether it violated the terms of Stone’s bail. One possible consequence of the post is that Jackson could impose a gag order on Stone or worse, send him to jail until his trial.
“I am kicking myself over my own stupidity,” Stone said from the witness stand, according to reporters at the hearing.
“I recognize that I let the court down. I let you down. I let myself down. I let my family down. I let my attorneys down. I can only say I’m sorry. It was a momentary lapse in judgement. Perhaps I talk too much,” said Stone, who chalked his post up to an “outgrowth of the extreme stress of the situation.”
Stone was indicted on Jan. 24 in the special counsel’s probe on seven charges, most of which are related to the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation.
Calling the post an “egregious, stupid error for which I apologize to the court,” Stone took responsibility for posting the image, though he claimed he did not select it.
In the post, Stone referred to special counsel Robert Mueller as a “Deep State hitman,” and criticized Jackson over her handling of a case against Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman and former Stone business partner.
Jackson revoked Manafort’s bail eight months after his indictment for alleged witness tampering. The order landed Manafort in jail, where he has remained ever since.
Jackson imposed a limited gag order in the case last Thursday, ruling that lawyers and witnesses could not discuss the case out of concerns of influencing a potential jury. Jackson’s order only restricted Stone from commenting about the case at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C.
Stone was indicted on Jan. 24 on seven charges: five counts of making false statements to the House Intelligence Committee; one count of witness tampering and one count of impeding an official government proceeding.
Stone has proclaimed his innocence and vowed to fight the charges at trial.
He has not been accused of having any illegal contacts with WikiLeaks or Russians. He was also not charged with lying about those matters, even though he told Congress that he had not direct contacts with either regarding Democrats’ emails.
Stone could go to trial as soon as July.
