Roger Stone lashes out in Florida testimony

Source: Politico | February 28, 2020 | Josh Gerstein

Days before Stone learned his prison sentence, the GOP operative gave a combative deposition in separate court cases, airing some anger.

Roger Stone looked like a man on edge, under extreme stress and struggling to contain pent-up fury.

The GOP provocateur was just days away from finding out his fate from a criminal case that drew nationwide attention, that the president was openly complaining about. And to the world, Stone was largely silent, mostly gagged by the judge who handled his federal trial.

But in a South Florida court reporter’s office in mid-February, Stone was talking — a lot, testifying in a little-noticed deposition for a slate of a civil suits. He seemed largely unconcerned with maintaining the dapper, serene image he cultivated over the last year sweeping in and out of federal court in Washington, D.C., fighting charges he lied to investigators about his actions related to Russia’s 2016 election hack.

With no judge on hand, Stone was free to tear into his enemies as he did in an earlier era. He could be combative and hard-charging if he wanted. He could even spout vulgarities as he spared with his inquisitor.

And he did just that.

In five-and-a-half hours of video recorded over two days, Stone’s hands shake, he bares his teeth, his lips twitch and he repeatedly loses his temper in the face of goading from conservative lawyer Larry Klayman, who has several libel suits pending against Stone and his associates.

“If you want to keep insulting me, this will be over and you can run back to the judge like a little bitch,” Stone said during one particularly heated exchange.

“Did you just call me a bitch?” Klayman asked.

“You’re acting like one. … You don’t have anything, my friend. You got nothing,” Stone replied, slapping his hand on the table for emphasis.

………

Days before that sentencing, Stone had been ordered by Florida state court judge, Carol-Lisa Phillips, to sit for questioning after Klayman raised concerns that delaying the session could have led to Stone being sent away to prison before he could be deposed. He ended up testifying over two days, Feb. 12 and 13.

In all, Klayman referenced six different lawsuits at the start of the deposition, including a suit claiming that Stone falsely said Klayman had “never won a courtroom victory in his life,” that “he could be the single worst lawyer in America,” and that his IQ is below 70.

Clearly, both men aren’t fond of the other.

……..

While most of the deposition evoked schoolyard combat and Stone generally refused to discuss matters related to his criminal trial, Klayman did elicit one claim that Stone didn’t make during his D.C. trial, at which he declined to testify. In the sworn questioning in the civil cases, Stone denied he ever talked to then-candidate Trump about WikiLeaks and its publication of emails hacked from Hillary Clinton supporters and the Democratic National Committee.

“I’ve never spoken to him about WikiLeaks,” Stone said. He added of his conversations with Trump: “None of them regard WikiLeaks. There was no evidence of that presented during the trial. It was an assertion by the government, but that does not make it true.”

………

Despite the alarming allegations Stone leveled at him, Klayman posted the full-length videos of the deposition online. He told POLITICO the recordings are unedited.

“He showed his true colors,” Klayman said of Stone. “A lot of the things he said are false.”

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