US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson denied Roger Stone’s motion to dismiss the charges against him in a ruling on Thursday, The Hill reports, saying that Stone had “not identified any legal ground” justifying dismissing the charges and that the “defendant misunderstands the law of materiality and the fundamental nature of a motion to dismiss an indictment.”
Stone, a GOP operative and one time political adviser to President Trump, is charged with witness tampering, obstruction, and lying to Congress about his contacts with Wikileaks, according to Bloomberg.
The judge also denied Stone’s attempt to investigate Mueller’s team for “selective prosecution”, writing, “Based on the allegations in the indictment which are assumed to be true for the purposes of these motions, it is fair to say that Stone has no one but himself to blame for the fact that he was investigated by the Department of Justice.”
Jackson also denied Stone’s argument that former counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment was unconstitutional. She said the argument put forth by Stone’s counsel “ignores the context and legislative history of the appropriation as well as its text.”
An additional motion from Stone argued that his prosecution would “unconstitutionally impinge on the President’s ability to carry out his duties as the chief executive.” The judge dismissed this argument, writing, “First of all, Roger Stone is not the President of the United States. So it is not clear how any prohibition against investigating the chief executive would apply him.”
Jackson did grant, in part, Stone’s motion to be given access to redacted portions of the special counsel’s report which relate to his case, according to The Hill. She ordered that Stone be allowed to view the portions “withheld solely on the basis that its release could affect the ongoing prosecution of this case.”
Her order noted that the materials fall under the gag order which she slapped on Stone earlier this year, so those portions are unlikely to become publicly available. The gag order was expanded last month by Judge Jackson when she forbid Stone, who posted a picture of her with a crosshairs over her head to Instagram in February, from posting to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram after she found that his recent Instagram posts had violated her previous order.
Roger Stone will go to trial in November in Washington DC federal court, per Bloomberg.
