- Roger Stone will invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to the January 6 panel.
- The longtime GOP operative received protection from Oath Keepers the day before the riot.
- Other figures subpoenaed by the committee, John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark, also pleaded the Fifth.
Roger Stone will invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in his Friday deposition with the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, his lawyer confirmed to Reuters.
CNN first reported on December 8 that Stone would plead the Fifth and not answer any questions in his deposition or turn over any subpoenaed documents.
Stone was present in Washington, D.C., and received protection from members of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing paramilitary group on January 5, the day before the Capitol riot. Six of those who protected Stone later participated in the breach of the Capitol, The New York Times found.
Federal prosecutors have charged multiple members of the militia group in connection with the riot at the Capitol and the January 6 committee is examining the role of extremist right-wing movements in the insurrection.
Two other major figures who pushed baseless claims of election fraud and participated in the ultimately-unsuccessful efforts to overturn Trump's Electoral College loss have also pleaded the Fifth in response to subpoenas from January 6 committee.
John Eastman, the legal scholar who wrote memos arguing that former VP Mike Pence could unilaterally reject entire states' slates of electoral votes, and Jeffrey Clark, a former official at the Department of Justice who served as a top cheerleader for baseless election fraud conspiracy theories, also both invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to the Committee.
Stone, a longtime Republican operative, and "dirty trickster," served as an informal advisor to Trump over the course of 40 years and briefly held a role on Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. And Stone subsequently found himself in the crosshairs of congressional probes and federal investigations over that campaign.
In 2019, a federal jury convicted Stone on seven counts of making false statements under oath, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering over his obstructions of multiple congressional probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia.
A federal judge sentenced Stone to 40 months in prison, but former President Donald Trump first commuted Stone's sentence in July of 2020 and then issued Stone a full presidential pardon in December 2020 shortly before he left office.