Roger Stone Is Found Guilty in Trial That Revived Trump-Russia Saga

Testimony by Rick Gates, Mr. Trump’s deputy campaign chairman, called into question Mr. Trump’s answers to queries from Mr. Mueller. Mr. Trump, who agreed to respond to questions only in writing rather than sit for an interview, said he could not recall the specifics of any of 21 conversations he had with Mr. Stone in the six months before the election. Mr. Stone told House investigators that he never discussed his conversations with an intermediary to WikiLeaks with anyone involved in the Trump campaign.

But in one of the trial’s most revealing moments, Mr. Gates recounted a July 31, 2016, phone call between Mr. Stone and Mr. Trump, just days after WikiLeaks had released a trove of emails embarrassing the Clinton campaign. As soon as he hung up with Mr. Stone, Mr. Gates testified, Mr. Trump declared that “more information” was coming, an apparent reference to future releases from WikiLeaks that would rattle his political rival.

Mr. Stone, 67, joins a notable list of former Trump aides convicted of lying to federal authorities. It includes Mr. Gates; Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser; Michael D. Cohen, the president’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, and George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide. And his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was also once Mr. Stone’s partner in a political consulting firm, was convicted of a string of financial crimes and is serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison term.

The most serious charge against Mr. Stone, witness tampering, carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. The other charges carry a maximum of five years each. But the punishment for a first-time offender like Mr. Stone will almost certainly be much lighter.

Working against Mr. Stone could be his multiple run-ins earlier this year with Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is overseeing the case and will preside over sentencing, set for Feb. 6. After a series of infractions, including posting a photo of the judge with an image of cross-hairs next to her head on Instagram in February, she banned him from social media.

After the verdict was announced, prosecutors asked Judge Jackson to order Mr. Stone into custody, saying he had violated her gag order by making comments the previous day in a broadcast by Infowars, a far-right website run by Alex Jones. But the judge rejected their motion, saying that in recent months Mr. Stone had complied with her orders and proof of a new infraction was not entirely clear.

In a video posted to Infowars, titled “Roger’s Emergency Message To America,” Mr. Jones said that Mr. Stone had told him that he expected to be convicted and wanted Mr. Trump to pardon him. “I appeal to the president to pardon me, because to do so would be an action that would show these corrupt courts that they’re not going to get away with persecuting people for their free speech or for the crime of getting the president elected,” he said Mr. Stone told him.