Flamboyant political operative Roger Stone kept mum last week during a grilling by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
He invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination for every question during a deposition that lasted 90 minutes.
“This morning, in fulfillment of a federal subpoena, I did my civic duty and I responded as required by law,” Mr. Stone, a conservative consultant and lobbyist, said Friday after leaving the deposition.
He said he refused to answer questions to protect himself from the House Democrats, and he insisted that he wasn’t involved with any wrongdoing related to the pro-Trump mob storming the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“I did invoke my Fifth Amendment rights to every question, not because I have done anything wrong, but because I am fully aware of the House Democrats’ long history of fabricating perjury charges on the basis of comments that are innocuous immaterial or irrelevant,” he said.
Mr. Stone called the probe “witch hunt 3.0” and lashed out at House Democrats for infringing on “constitutionally protected political activity.”
Mr. Stone is among more than 50 witnesses subpoenaed by the committee as lawmakers on the Democrat-run panel cast a wide net in its quest to get to the bottom of the events leading up to the Capitol attack.
The committee said it called in Mr. Stone because he spoke at a rally in Washington on Jan. 5 and allegedly solicited “support to pay for security” in connection with the rally on the fund-raising website stopthesteal.org.
The committee also said Mr. Stone hired members of the Oath Keepers to provide personal security at the rally.
The committee subpoenaed Mr. Stone late last month along with far-right radio host Alex Jones and others who the lawmakers said were involved in organizing and promoting rallies that were a prelude to the Jan. 6 riot.
Mr. Stone maintained that he did nothing wrong.
“I stress, yet again, that I was not on the Ellipse, I did not march to the Capitol, I was not at the Capitol,” he told reporters after the deposition. “And any claim, assertion, or even implication that I knew about or was involved in any way whatsoever with the illegal and politically counterproductive activities of Jan. 6th is categorically false.”
Members of the committee and most Democrats maintain that the probe aims only to uncover the truth about events before, during and after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
“If the Speaker [of the House Nancy Pelosi] was seriously interested in getting to the bottom of what happened on January 6th, she would release the thousands of hours of videotape taken by government cameras on the incidents of that day,” Mr. Stone said. “She would also release the audio transmissions of all law enforcement agencies on that day.”
• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.
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