Legal Experts Say Stone 'Playing With Fire' Amid Gag Order

GOP operative and President Donald Trump ally Roger Stone is "playing with fire" by publicly pushing back at Michael Cohen's testimony Wednesday involving the GOP operative, Law&Crime reported.

In his public testimony before a House Oversight Committee, Cohen asserted then-candidate Donald Trump "knew that Roger Stone was talking with Julian Assange about a WikiLeaks drop of Democratic National Committee emails," and that, "Mr. Trump knew from Roger Stone in advance about the WikiLeaks drop of emails."

WikiLeaks promptly refuted the testimony, saying "WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange has never had a telephone call with Roger Stone," adding, "WikiLeaks publicly teased its pending publications on Hillary Clinton and published > 30k of her emails on 16 March 2016."

And Stone also fought back — making statements to several news outlets.

Stone denied the Cohen assertion to BuzzFeed News, The New York Times and ABC News.

However, a sweeping gag order has been placed on Stone banning him from commenting about the charges he faces as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe.

And that would include Cohen, the law site noted.

"Given that his prosecution involves Stone's communications with Wikileaks/Assange as well as touches upon President Trump's alleged knowledge, a reasonable interpretation of the Court's gag order is that it was violated," national security lawyer Mark Zaid told Law&Crime.

And former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti told Newsweek that Stone's statement "appears to violate the gag order, although [Stone] will argue that it is a profession of innocence and thus does not violate the order."

Mariotti said at least, it was a "foolish" risk, but suspected there would not be consequences because this was "fairly minor" by Stone's standards.

Former federal prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg also told Newsweek the "statement probably does violate the gag order," adding Stone is "playing with fire."

CNN legal analyst and attorney Ross Garber told Law&Crime that Stone was running "an incredibly high risk" with his comments and hoped he had consulted with his lawyers before making them.

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