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Jan. 29 (UPI) -- Roger Stone, a political operative and former adviser of President Donald Trump, pleaded not guilty in Washington federal court Tuesday to charges stemming from the Russia investigation. Federal agents arrested the 66-year-old Friday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on a seven-count indictment, which included charges of lying, obstruction and witness tampering.
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He was accused of lying about his contact with WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange during the 2016 presidential campaign. Stone has called Assange "my hero" for releasing dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The Mueller team also said Stone attempted to intimidate Randy Credico, another witness interviewed in the probe.
During Tuesday's court hearing, Stone again agreed to certain conditions of his release on a $250,000 surety bond. He's not allowed to travel outside the court districts in New York, South Florida and Washington, D.C., cannot have a U.S. passport, and he is required to make weekly contact with a pretrial agent.
As Stone walked into the federal court Tuesday, some onlookers shouted "lock him up!," a play on the popular chant used at Trump campaign rallies about Clinton. Others held signs showing support for Stone and calling for Mueller to be fired.
Mueller is examining whether a Russian hacker provided WikiLeaks with damaging information about Clinton that was ultimately passed on to Trump's campaign through Stone. Stone worked briefly for the Trump campaign in 2015 and continued to work for him on an informal basis.
Stone told ABC News in July he was the member of Trump's campaign who corresponded with hackers from the group Guccifer 2.0, which hacked Clinton's emails. The Democratic National Committee became aware that its computer systems had been hacked in May 2016.
Stone denied knowing that the Russians were behind Guccifer.
Stone said in mid-August he'd directly communicated with WikiLeaks, which the organization denied. He then clarified that he'd worked with an intermediary.
After Trump was elected, Congress and the FBI began looking into reports of Russian interference in the election. The indictment alleges Stone made "multiple false statements" to the House intelligence committee, denying he possessed records of the interactions. He also attempted to persuade a witness to give false testimony and withhold information, the indictment said.
In the lead-up to the election, tranches of documents were released that had been stolen from the personal email account of the Clinton campaign's chairman. In all, 50,000 documents were stolen and made public. Stone had been notified that summer WikiLeaks planned two more dumps that would be "very damaging" to Clinton, the indictment reads. They would focus on Clinton's health, say she has a bad memory and that she'd suffered a stroke.
The indictment, issued by a grand jury Thursday, said Stone received a text message on Oct. 1, 2016, stating, "big news Wednesday ... now pretend u don't know me ... Hillary's campaign will die this week."
The release of information led to Clinton's campaign making a "full-court press" to keep Assange from releasing any more information.
The indictment said WikiLeaks released the first set of emails on Oct. 7, prompting a text message from Trump's campaign to Stone that said, "Well done."
Nicholas Sakelaris contributed to this report.
