Attorneys for Roger Stone said Thursday that he has been complying with a court-imposed gag order contrary to social media posts recently cited by federal prosecutors.
Lawyers representing Mr. Stone, a longtime political consultant and confidant to President Trump, defended his Instagram posts in D.C. federal court from claims they violated a gag order barring him from making public statements about his case.
The posts “are not ’statements,’ nor do they pose a danger to the fair trial concern which was (and is) the constitutional raison d’etre of the Order,” argued Mr. Stone’s legal team.
“The ’prejudice’ to be concerned about is prejudice against Stone; his lonely voice presents no threat to a fair trial under this Court’s supervision,” the lawyers wrote in an 11-page filing.
Mr. Stone, 66, was indicted in January as a result of the special counsel’s investigation into the 2016 presidential election. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of obstruction, witness tampering and perjury, and his trial is currently scheduled to start later this year.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued a gag order in February prohibiting Mr. Stone from “making statements to the media or in public settings about the Special Counsel’s investigation or this case,” which prosecutors argue he violated through social media postings brought to the court’s attention last week.
The Department of Justice cited a handful of Instagram posts in which Mr. Stone referenced articles about the special counsel’s investigation and his case, including one where he tagged the accounts of several major news organizations, “effectively calling on those outlets to cover Stone’s allegations,” according to Jessie K. Liu, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
“Stone’s posts appear calculated to generate media coverage of information that is not relevant to this case but that could prejudice potential jurors,” she argued.
“The government’s disproportionate reaction is an effort to deprive Stone of the narrow latitude the Court left him; a latitude that was not violated by the posts, and a latitude which, if curtailed, based on the posts, would violate Stone’s First Amendment rights,” defense lawyers responded Thursday.
It was not immediately clear when the judge would rule on whether Mr. Stone violated the gag order and the conditions of his release pending trial.
Mr. Stone served as an adviser to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign through 2015. Both men have known each other for upwards of 30 years.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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