COURTS/ROGER STONE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Roger Stone will go to trial in early November in Washington on charges that he lied about his efforts to secretly contact WikiLeaks in 2016, a federal judge decided Thursday [3-14-19]. The longtime Donald Trump adviser’s trial is now scheduled to start November 5 and is likely to last about two weeks, said Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the US District Court in DC. Stone has pleaded not guilty to seven charges of obstruction, lying to Congress and witness tampering. He was released on bail following his arrest seven weeks ago. The trial is set nine months from now partly because of the amount of evidence Stone’s team must piece through and may argue about before the trial. Prosecutors have turned over nine terabytes of data to the defense team so far, they said in court…Stone appeared before Jackson — just a day after she sentenced his former lobbying colleague Paul Manafort to prison — for a status hearing to hash out pretrial issues and set a trial date. But a question of whether Stone broke his gag order — with the 2019 release of his book about the 2016 election in which he attacked the Mueller investigation — has hung over his recent proceedings. The judge left that issue unresolved on Thursday at the brief hearing.”
–Katelyn Polantz, Sara Murray and Marshall Cohen, “Judge sets November 5 trial date for Roger Stone,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, March 14, 2019 6:11 pm