Political consultant Roger Stone, a former campaign adviser to President Donald Trump, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges of obstruction, giving false statements and witness tampering.
Stone, 66, entered a not guilty plea Tuesday morning during his arraignment in Washington, four days after he was arrested on charges stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election meddling, Vox reported.
>> More on Robert Mueller's investigation
A judge scheduled his next hearing in the case for Feb. 1, according to BuzzFeed News.
Stone was arrested in the predawn hours Friday at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The indictment handed down that day does not accuse him of coordinating with Russia or with WikiLeaks on the release of hacked Democratic emails. But it does allege that he misled lawmakers about his pursuit of those communications and interest in them. The anti-secrecy website published emails in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election that the U.S. says were stolen from Democrats by Russian operatives.
>> READ: The full indictment of Roger Stone by special counsel Robert Mueller
Stone said he did nothing more than exercise his First Amendment rights to drum up interest with voters about the WikiLeaks disclosures. He said he never discussed the issue with Trump.
"It's called politics and they haven't criminalized it, at least not yet," Stone said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."
He asserted his innocence in an impromptu news conference Friday outside the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, where he was at times nearly drowned out by chants of, “Lock him up.”
“As I have always said the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about,” Stone said.
He called the charges “politically motivated” and emphasized that the charges, “relate in no way to Russian collusion (or) WikiLeaks collaboration.”
Stone is the sixth Trump aide charged in Mueller's investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign and the 34th person overall.
Stone was released from custody Friday on a $250,000 bond.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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