- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighed in on the Friday indictment of Roger Stone, who served as a Trump campaign informal adviser.
- "It is staggering that the President has chosen to surround himself with people who violated the integrity of our democracy and lied to the FBI and Congress about it," Pelosi said in a statement.
- Stone was taken into custody in an early-morning arrest at his Florida home. He was charged with seven accounts of witness tampering, obstruction, and lying to Congress.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighed in on the indictment of Roger Stone by special counsel Robert Mueller's office and questioned the credibility of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
"The indictment of Roger Stone makes clear that there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to influence the 2016 election and subvert the will of the American people," Pelosi said in a statement on Friday night. "It is staggering that the President has chosen to surround himself with people who violated the integrity of our democracy and lied to the FBI and Congress about it."
Stone, a long-time Trump ally and informal campaign adviser, was taken into custody at his Florida home on Friday morning. He was charged with seven counts, including witness tampering, obstruction, and lying to Congress.
According to the 24-page indictment, a "senior Trump Campaign official" was directed by someone to contact Stone after emails from the Democratic National Committee were released by WikiLeaks prior to the 2016 election.
US intelligence groups previously assessed "with high confidence" that Russia's military intelligence arm worked in conjunction with Wikileaks.
In addition to Stone, others who were close to Trump - including his former campaign manager and former lawyer - have been indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller's office as part of the investigation into the potential collusion between Trump's 2016 campaign and the Kremlin.
"In the face of 37 indictments, the President's continued actions to undermine the Special Counsel investigation raise the questions: what does Putin have on the President, politically, personally or financially?" Pelosi said in her statement.
Following the arrest, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders distanced Trump from Stone and said "this has nothing to do with the president and certainly nothing to do with the White House."