The FBI has arrested Roger Stone, the longtime adviser to President Donald Trump, as a part of special counsel Rober Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He was charged with seven counts that include witness tampering, false statements, and obstruction of an official proceeding.

Stone is expected to make an appearance in federal court later on Friday.

You can read the indictment below:

This is a breaking news post. We will update as more information becomes available. </s> Washington — Roger Stone, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, has been arrested and charged with seven counts, according to a grand jury indictment that was made public by US special counsel Robert Mueller's office on Friday.

Stone, who was indicted in Florida on Thursday, faces one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of making false statements and one count of witness tampering, according to the Special Counsel's Office. </s> SPECIAL REPORT: Roger Stone speaks after being indicted in Mueller probe

Roger Stone, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, makes his first court appearance following his arrest on charges of of obstruction, giving false statements and witness tampering. Despite being indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, Stone has consistently denied collusion. </s> Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to US President Donald Trump, was arrested Friday under an indictment issued by the special counsel examining possible collusion with Russia.

Stone was charged with seven counts, including obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements and witness tampering, according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office.

The indictment concerns Stone's communications with with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose group leaked tens of thousands of stolen Democratic Party emails that embarrassed Trump's rival Hillary Clinton in an apparent bid to influence the election.

It was the first indictment in months by the special prosecutor probing Russian efforts to tip the 2016 US election toward Trump and whether he and his people tried to obstruct justice.

FBI agents arrested Stone at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida before dawn, and he is due in federal court there later in the day. His lawyer did not immediately respond to questions for comment.

Stone, who launched his career as a campaign aide to Richard Nixon and has a tattoo on his back of the first US president to resign from office, has spent decades advising various US political campaigns.

He was one of the first members of Trump's team when the billionaire real estate magnate formally announced he was seeking office, but he left months later over a dispute.

The two men, however, remained in close contact, the indictment underlying that Stone "maintained regular contact with and publicly supported the Trump Campaign through the 2016 election."

Stone had previously said he was ready to face possible charges from Mueller's team, and publicly taunted the special counsel, echoing Trump's claims of a "witch hunt."

"This was supposed to be about Russian collusion, and it appears to be an effort to silence or punish the president´s supporters and his advocates," he told NBC's "Meet The Press" in May.

"It is not inconceivable now that Mr Mueller and his team may seek to conjure up some extraneous crime pertaining to my business, or maybe not even pertaining to the 2016 election," Stone said. "I would chalk this up to an effort to silence me."

Stone has also previously insisted that he would never testify against Trump.

"There's no circumstance under which I would testify against the president, because I'd have to bear false witness against him," he told ABC's "This Week" in December. "I'd have to make things up, and I'm not going to do that." </s> Ex-Trump adviser Roger Stone arrested as part of Mueller probe

Stone blasted the special counsel's investigation as "politically motivated" and said he would plead not guilty to the charges against him after his court appearance. </s> Roger Stone, a long-time associate of US president Donald Trump, was charged with obstruction and witness tampering on Friday, becoming the latest figure to be indicted by special counsel, Robert Mueller.

Mr Stone was arrested by the FBI shortly before daybreak on Friday at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

He later appeared at a federal court where he was released on bail on a $250,000 bond.

Speaking outside the court, Mr Stone protested his innocence: “I will plead not guilty to these charges. I will defeat them in court,” he said to the assembled crowd.

Some shouted “Lock him up”, a reference to Mr Stone’s taunting of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The 66-year-old political operative said there was no evidence of collusion with Russia, adding: “I am a fervent supporter of the president. I think he is doing a great job of making America great again... There’s no circumstance under which I would bear false witness to the president.”

He made a double “v” sign as he addressed the crowd, a symbol that appeared to recall Richard Nixon’s famous gesture as he left the White House for the last time after his resignation in 1974.

Mr Stone worked for Nixon’s campaign in the early days of his career and famously has a tattoo of the former president on his back.

Mr Stone was charged with seven counts, according to the indictment: one count of obstructing an official proceeding, one count of witness tampering and five counts of false statements.

The court documents shed light on a key issue that has dogged Mr Stone in recent months – what he knew about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server by Russian intelligence in 2016, which led to the release of documents by Wikileaks.

The email hack, which contained damaging information about Mrs Clinton, played a central role in the final months of the 2016 presidential campaign.

The documents state that Mr Stone told “senior Trump campaign officials” about the emails between June and July of 2016.

After the first batch of emails were released by Wikileaks on July 22nd, it is claimed that a senior campaign official was directed to ask Mr Stone to find out information about possible further damaging information about Mrs Clinton that might be forthcoming.

The documents show that these interactions continued into the autumn, revealing email exchanges between Mr Stone and former Trump aide Steven Bannon, as well as with Donald Trump jnr in October, just before 6,000 emails relating to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta were released.

Prior to the 2016 election, Mr Stone suggested several times in public comments that he had advance knowledge of the email leak.

In a tweet in October 2016, he seemed to suggest that he knew that the Podesta leak was imminent.

“I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon. #LockHerUp” he tweeted.

The emails were released later that week.

Mr Stone’s indictment provides the strongest link yet between the Trump campaign and Wikileaks’ efforts to disrupt the Clinton campaign.

A colourful figure who has been well known in the US political scene since his work for the Nixon administration in the 1970s, Mr Stone’s friendship with Mr Trump stretches back decades.

He worked as a formal adviser to Mr Trump in 2015, continuing to advise him in a more informal capacity during the presidential campaign.

He is the 33rd person to be indicted in relation to the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and the sixth Trump associate to be charged.

Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Mr Trump, said the indictment showed no evidence of collusion. “The indictment today does not allege Russian collusion by Roger Stone or anyone else. Rather, the indictment focuses on alleged false statements made to Congress.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sought to broadly distance Mr Trump from the charges. “The charges brought against Mr Stone have nothing to do with the president,” she said.

In a morning tweet, Mr Trump appeared to lash out at the investigation, questioning how CNN, which aired footage of the FBI raid on Mr Stone’s home, had known in advance of the arrest.

“Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country! NO COLLUSION! Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers are treated better. Who alerted CNN to be there?”

However, CNN said that, through research, it deduced that Mr Stone’s arrest could be forthcoming and, as a result, the network sent a camera crew to his home on Thursday. </s> Roger Stone has said that Donald Trump was put on earth to be president. Hollis Johnson

Editors note: This article was first published in March 2017. It has been updated in light of Roger Stone being i ndicted by the Mueller probe.

It took nearly 20 years for Roger Stone to realize his dream.

Since the 1980s, the self-described "dirty trickster" who's been in and around Republican politics for half a century, had made it something of a mission to make Donald Trump president.

Despite parting ways with the Trump campaign in August 2015 — Trump says he fired Stone for hogging the media spotlight; Stone says he quit because Trump attacked Megyn Kelly — Stone has remained one of Trump's most loyal true believers.

And now Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted him with one count of obstruction, five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering, according to a Justice Department filing on Thursday.

Stone was put in the crosshairs of the FBI over communications with a Russian hacker and his alleged communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as the FBI look for connections between Trump's campaign and Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Thursday's filing repeatedly referred to Stone's contact with "Organization 1," which had "posted documents stolen by others" from the US government and citizens.

The filing said it "released tens of thousands of documents stolen from" people including the Democratic National Committee and the personal email account of Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta.

"Organization 1" is widely believed to be WikiLeaks.

The filing also said Stone deliberately obstructed investigations by the FBI, House Intelligence Committee, and Senate Intelligence Committee into Russian interference in the election.

Stone has repeatedly said he has nothing to do with Russia, but messages he has sent to the hacker accused of a cyberattack on the DNC, as well as Stone's own provocative statements, continued to raise questions.

"It's rare that I'm accused of something that I'm not guilty of," Stone told the New Yorker in 2008.

Stone said in July it's "a possibility" that he could be indicted over his communications with Russian hacker Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks, which experts had warned could implicate him in a conspiracy to defraud the United States by interfering in the 2016 election.

On August 12, nearly a year after he left Trump's campaign and a few weeks after WikiLeaks, a radical-transparency group, published the first set of stolen emails from the DNC, Stone reached out through a private message to a Twitter user named "Guccifer 2.0."

Earlier that August, Stone had written on the alt-right website Breitbart, then controlled by Steve Bannon, that it was "a hacker who goes by the name of Guccifer 2.0" — and not the Russians — who hacked the DNC and fed the documents to WikiLeaks.

But experts quickly linked Guccifer 2.0 back to Russia and concluded that the so-called hacker was the product of a Russian disinformation campaign. When the special counsel's office indicted 12 Russian security officers for hacking the DNC and the Clinton campaign in July, they said the hacker was a front for Russian military intelligence.

In his messages with Guccifer 2.0, Stone asked if the hacker could retweet his Breitbart column about the 2016 presidential election possibly being "rigged."

Guccifer 2.0 responded: "i'm pleased to say that u r great man. please tell me if i can help u anyhow. it would be a great pleasure to me."

Stone later told Business Insider that the interaction he had with the hacker was so "brief and banal" that he "had forgotten it."

"Not exactly 007 stuff even if Gruccifer [sic] 2.0 was working for the Russkies," Stone said. "Meaningless."

Stone's tweets in the days after his communications with Guccifer 2.0 have raised questions about whether he knew in advance that Podesta's emails would be imminently published by WikiLeaks.

On August 21, Stone sent a series of famously prescient tweets. "Trust me, it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary." On October 1 Stone tweeted: "Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done."

On October 3 he tweeted: "I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon #LockHerUp."

Four days later, WikiLeaks published its first set of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta.

In October, Stone said he had "back-channel communication with Assange," but has denied having any direct contact with WikiLeaks, saying that he had been getting his information from a mutual friend he shares with Assange, later revealed to be radio host Randy Credico, who has since been subpoenaed to testify in the Mueller probe.

But in February, The Atlantic reported that Stone was in direct communication with WikiLeaks via Twitter in the days leading up to the election.

Mike Pompeo, then the director of the CIA, described WikiLeaks as a "hostile, non-state intelligence service" last year.

"Since I was all over national TV, cable and print defending wikileaks and Assange against the claim that you are Russian agents and debunking the false charges of sexual assault as trumped up bs you may want to reexamine the strategy of attacking me- cordially R," Stone wrote to Wikileaks on October 13, 2016, according to The Atlantic.

Wikileaks responded the same day, "We appreciate that. However, the false claims of association are being used by the democrats to undermine the impact of our publications. Don't go there if you don't want us to correct you."

"Ha!" Stone wrote back on October 15. "The more you 'correct' me the more people think you're lying. Your operation leaks like a sieve. You need to figure out who your friends are."

On November 9, the morning after Trump won the presidential election, Wikileaks wrote to Stone, "Happy? We are now more free to communicate."

It is unclear whether Stone and Wikileaks had any other private communications either before October 13 or after November 9, 2016.

Stone told the House Intelligence Committee in a prepared statement last September that his communications with Wikileaks were always conducted through Credico, an associate of Assange who tweeted a selfie outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where Assange lives, two days before WikiLeaks released a trove of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's emails. The email dump came the same day as a damning Access Hollywood tape surfaced in which Trump discussed groping women without their consent.

"I have never said or written that I had any direct communication with Julian Assange and have always clarified in numerous interviews and speeches that my communication with WikiLeaks was through the aforementioned journalist," Stone told the committee.

Meanwhile, NBC News reported in October 2018 that Jerome Corsi, a right-wing conspiracy theorist and close friend of Stone who was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury, knew in advance that Clinton campaign emails had been stolen and given to WikiLeaks.

Stone told Business Insider in March 2017 that he "had no contacts or communications with the Russian State, Russian Intelligence or anyone fronting for them or acting as intermediaries for them," he said. "None. Nada. Zilch. I am not in touch with any Russians. don't have a Russian girlfriend, don't like Russian dressing and have stopped drinking Russian Vodka."

The New York Times reported in October 2018 that Stone discussed the WikiLeaks document dumps with both Steve Bannon, then the chairman of the Trump campaign, and Matthew Boyle, who at the time was the Washington editor of the far-right website Breitbart, which was previously spearheaded by Bannon.

In an exchange on Oct. 3, 2016, Boyle reportedly asked Stone, "Assange — what's he got? Hope it's good," to which Stone replied, "It is."

Boyle then reportedly pressed Bannon to contact Stone about the impending WikiLeaks dump, telling Bannon, "clearly he knows what Assange has." Just 4 days after that exchange on Oct. 7, WikiLeaks released the trove of John Podesta's emails.

"Mere knowledge alone might not be enough to establish criminal responsibility," Cornell Law School Professor Jens David Ohlin told Business Insider about Stone's potential liability with regard to his contacts with WikiLeaks and Guccifer.

"However, if Stone was not just aware of what WikiLeaks was doing but actually intended for it to happen, then he could be considered a member of the criminal conspiracy and just as guilty as its other members," he added.

Also in October 2018, Mother Jones reported that Stone had pushed the Trump administration to issue a pre-emptive presidential pardon to Assange, who has not been charged with a crime in the United States.

Ohlin told Business Insider at the time that "if someone offered Assange a pardon in exchange for Assange releasing hacked emails to influence the election, this would constitute a criminal conspiracy. If Trump or those close to him were part of these discussions, they would all be part of the same criminal conspiracy."

And then emailed leaked which shows top Trump campaign officials and right-wing media allies said they were convinced Stone was closer to Wikileaks than he let on, and Mueller was reported to have several emails from 2016 between the GOP strategist Roger Stone and Corsi that showed Stone anticipated a WikiLeaks document dump at the height of the 2016 election.

The White House, for its part, has worked to distance itself from Stone. During a press conference on March 20, 2017, then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that Stone and Trump talk occasionally but that Stone's work for the campaign ended in August 2015.

"I don't know at all when the last time they even spoke was," Spicer said.

In December, Stone invoked his Fifth Amendment right and declined to provide documents requested of him by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Washington Post reported in December that Mueller's office has reached out to the House Intelligence Committee, seeking an official transcript of Roger Stone's testimony to the panel — signalling that proscutors were moving closer to an indictment.

Stone was perhaps the first, and most influential, person to believe in Trump's political potential.

In 1988, Stone tried to persuade him to run for president. Trump decided against it, but 12 years later he launched a presidential exploratory committee, which Stone chaired.

Since the 1980s, Stone and Trump have fostered a close professional and political relationship. Stone has been characterized as Trump's longest-serving adviser.

Stone and Trump share remarkably similar worldviews and approaches to politics. Like Trump, Stone has a penchant for making bold, unsubstantiated claims, promoting conspiracy theories, and being unafraid of controversy. He told The New Yorker in 2008 that "The only thing worse in politics than being wrong is being boring."

Stone encouraged Trump's infamous "birther" conspiracy, which claimed that President Obama wasn't born in the US, and promoted unsubstantiated theories that Bill Clinton was a serial rapist and fathered a son.

Roger Stone, left, with Ed Rollins and Lee Atwater, right, discuss the meeting they had during the president's re-election campaign with former president Richard Nixon in Washington on Nov. 13, 1984. They are looking for advice on strategy for Reagan's second term effort. Nixon advised them to target Ohio as one of their main states. Ira Schwarz/AP

Trump has apparently adopted many of Stone's ideas and methods. Stone told The New Yorker in 2008 that "Politics is not about uniting people. It's about dividing people. And getting your fifty-one per cent." One of his cardinal rules was "Attack, attack, attack—never defend" and "Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack."

"It takes a certain kind of consultant who could work for a candidate like Donald Trump and it takes a certain kind of candidate to hire a consultant like Roger Stone," says Chris Barron, a Washington-based political consultant who has worked with Stone in the past, told the National Review in 2015.

In the 2017 Netflix documentary "Get Me Roger Stone," Trump says of Stone: "He loves the game, he has fun with it, and he's very good at it."

Both Stone and Trump are preoccupied with the news media, and they rail against it as being biased, but also court publicity. Stone is known for being easily accessible, and he seems to relish providing reporters with provocative sound bites. As Stone told The New York Times in 2015 of his life philosophy, "Never miss the opportunity to have sex or be on television, as Gore Vidal said."

The media has, in turn, portrayed Stone as everything from a "state-of-the-art sleazeball" to a dangerous conspirator. But Stone relishes these descriptions — the more unflattering the better.

"I revel in your hatred, because if I weren't effective you wouldn't hate me," Stone says in "Get Me Roger Stone."

Stone, who has been a Republican operative for almost 50 years, has long treated politics and campaigning as a battle to be won at any cost. As a junior in high school and vice president of the student government, he forced the president out and succeeded him.

''I built alliances and put all my serious challengers on my ticket," Stone told The New York Times in 1999. "Then I recruited the most unpopular guy in the school to run against me. You think that's mean? No, it's smart.''

Notably, Stone has remained an unapologetic Nixon supporter to this day. After working for Nixon's campaign in the 1970s, he maintained a close relationship with the president and regularly dined with him at his home in the years following the president's resignation. Stone has a tattoo of Nixon's face across his back and a large photograph of the former president over his bed.

Among many, Stone is better known for his eccentricities than his political work.

Throughout his career, Stone has cultivated what he calls his "extraordinary wardrobe," which includes a taste for seersucker suits and top hats, a style that The New Yorker has said makes Stone look "like a Prohibition-era mobster."

"If life is a stage, then you should always be in costume," Stone told The Times.

Stone told The New Yorker in 2008 that “Politics is not about uniting people. It’s about dividing people." Joe Raedle/Getty Images

'He always tries taking credit for things he never did'

Stone and Trump have had a rocky relationship. In 2008, Trump called Stone a "stone-cold loser," telling The New Yorker that "he always tries taking credit for things he never did."

In August 2015, Stone parted ways with Trump's campaign. While Trump announced that he had fired Stone, accusing him of attempting "to use the campaign for his own personal publicity," Stone said that he resigned, making public a letter he said he had sent to Trump arguing that the campaign was being derailed by "controversies involving personalities and provocative media fights."

Stone's departure came as Trump faced scrutiny surrounding his controversial comments about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.

Some conservatives believed Trump's campaign would suffer without Stone to guide it.

"It's hard to overstate just how close Trump and Stone have been over the years," the National Review wrote after Stone had left the campaign. "Trump without Stone is akin to George W. Bush without Karl Rove or Barack Obama without David Axelrod."

But even after Stone left the campaign, he remained a strong supporter, calling himself "the ultimate Trump loyalist." In January, Stone published a book, "The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution," in which he says Trump was "put on Earth" to be president.

Stone was raised in Lewisboro, New York, in a white working-class family. He told The New Yorker that while growing up adjacent to New Canaan, a wealthy Connecticut suburb, he saw himself as "living in kind of a bridge between two cultures, the white working class and the white upper class."

Stone remains convinced that both groups of white Americans should be politically united against what he sees as an overreaching government.

After high school Stone moved to DC to attend George Washington University. He never graduated.

Stone made his debut in national politics at 19, when he sent campaign contributions in the name of a socialist organization to Richard Nixon's rival in the 1972 Republican presidential primary. He then sent a letter to The New Hampshire Union-Leader with the donation receipt, in an attempt to undermine Nixon's competitor.

In a 2008 New Yorker article, Stone told reporter Jeffrey Toobin that Nixon started the "exodus of working-class people from the Democratic Party" and realigned the Republican Party's platform to one founded on antielitism.

"We were the party of the workingman! We wanted lower taxes for everyone, across the board," Stone said. "The point that the Democrats missed was that the people who weren't rich wanted to be rich."

As Toobin wrote, "Stone represents the less discussed but still vigorous legacy of Richard Nixon."

In 1976, Stone joined Ronald Reagan's first, unsuccessful run for the Republican presidential nomination as national youth director. Four years later, Stone took on the role of political director of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, helping pave Reagan's path to the White House.

But Stone, ever the campaigner, didn't take a position in the Reagan administration and instead started a political consulting and lobbying firm, Black, Manafort, Stone & Atwater, along with Paul Manafort, who, decades later, would become Trump's 2016 presidential campaign chairman.

Stone's corporate clients included Trump businesses and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., on whose behalf Stone lobbied his former campaign colleagues in the administration, and more controversial characters, including dictators in Zaire and the Philippines, and rebels in Angola.

Stone and his firm were on the forefront of a new era of political operatives lobbying their former campaign colleagues, now in powerful positions in the administration, to serve their private-sector ends.

But Stone was drawn back into campaigning when George H.W. Bush ran for president in 1988, serving as a senior consultant to Bush. Stone continued jumping between the campaign trails — for Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter and Kansas Republican Bob Dole — until he was kicked off Dole's presidential campaign after Stone and his wife were caught soliciting "similar couples or exceptional muscular" men for group sex. (Stone denied the accusations at the time but later admitted they were accurate.)

After Stone left Black, Manafort, Stone & Atwater in the mid-1990s, he ran various campaigns, including a billionaire's bid for New York governor, and then moved down to Miami. In 2000, he was instrumental in orchestrating the so-called Brooks Brothers riot — a chaotic pro-Bush protest outside the Miami recount center — which helped shut down the Florida recount in the presidential election, securing George W. Bush's victory over Al Gore. </s> WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the Russia probe (all times local):

An attorney for a prominent law firm is pleading guilty to lying to federal authorities about his interactions with a former Trump campaign associate.

Alex van der Zwaan is entering the plea in federal court in Washington where he is admitting to lying to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators about his interactions with Rick Gates. Gates is a former aide on President Donald Trump's campaign and a longtime associate of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

The charge against van der Zwaan does not involve election meddling or the Trump campaign's operations. It stems from the special counsel's investigation into a covert Washington lobbying campaign Manafort and Gates are accused of directing on behalf of pro-Russian Ukrainian interests.

Manafort and Gates have pleaded not guilty.

The law firm where a lawyer charged by special counsel Robert Mueller used to work says it fired him last year and has been cooperating with authorities.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP issued a statement Tuesday after news broke that Alex van der Zwaan had been charged with lying to investigators.

A charging document filed in federal court in Washington accuses van der Zwaan of lying to investigators about his interactions with Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign official.

Gates was indicted last year along with Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's campaign chairman, on charges of conspiracy to launder money and acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutors have filed a new charge against a lawyer they say lied to federal investigators in the Russia probe.

A charging document filed in federal court in Washington on Tuesday accuses Alex van der Zwaan of one charge of making false statements. The information was filed ahead of a plea hearing scheduled for later Tuesday.

The court filing says that van der Zwaan lied to investigators about his interactions with Rick Gates. Gates, a former Trump campaign aide, was indicted last year on charges of conspiracy to launder money and acting as an unregistered foreign agent.

Mueller is investigating Russian election interference and links between the Trump campaign and Russia.

President Donald Trump is again accusing his predecessor of not doing enough to prevent Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump tweets that's because President Barack Obama "thought Crooked Hillary was going to win and he didn't want to 'rock the boat.'" But Trump says when he won "the whole game changed and the Russian excuse became the narrative of the Dems."

Trump's tweet Tuesday included a quote from Obama saying in October 2016 that "there is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America's elections." Obama was addressing Trump's claims of voter fraud, not Russia's attempt to influence voters on social media.

Obama has defended his response to Russian meddling, saying he had told the Russian president to "cut it out."

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. </s> A former top adviser to President Donald Trump's election campaign has formally pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy and false statements charges in the Russia investigation.

The plea by Rick Gates is a strong indication that he is planning to co-operate with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation as it continues to probe the Trump campaign, Russian election interference and Gates' longtime business associate Paul Manafort.

Forty-five-year-old Gates made the plea at the federal courthouse in Washington.

It comes a day after Gates and Manafort were indicted in Virginia on new charges of tax evasion and bank fraud.
Roger Stone, a former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, is indicted by a federal grand jury and arrested on charges of obstruction, giving false statements, and witness tampering as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.