WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd February, 2019) A US Federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump's former campaign adviser Roger Stone not to discuss publicly his criminal case or he will be sent to jail pending trail.
"Publicity cannot subside if it's the defendant that's fanning the flames," US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Thursday during a court hearing on Stone's Instagram post where he suggested that Jackson was politically biased.
Stone apologized for his post. "I am hurtfully sorry for my own stupidity," he said in the court room, as quoted by NBC news.
"Today, I gave you a second chance. This is not baseball, you don't get a third chance," the judge told Stone.
Stone was arrested in January in the US state of Florida and charged with making false statements related to the alleged hacking of the Democratic Party's networks during the 2016 election. He pleaded not guilty to seven criminal counts.
Stone's case is a part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into allegations of Trump-Russia collusion and Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.
Trump has characterized the Russia probe as a political witch hunt that has not produced any evidence of collusion in two years. Russian officials have repeatedly denied meddling in the US election and said the allegations were made up to justify the electoral loss of a political candidate as well as deflect public attention from actual instances of election fraud and corruption.
