A longtime aide to flamboyant GOP strategist Roger Stone has been held in contempt by a federal judge for refusing to testify before a grand jury in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe.
Andrew Miller did not appear for a scheduled hearing Friday, defying a subpoena from Mueller's team.
Paul Kamenar, Miller's lawyer, told The Washington Post that his client was "held in contempt, which we asked him to be in order for us to appeal the judge's decision to the court of appeals."
Meanwhile, "Manhattan Madam" Kristin Davis, another close friend of Stone, intended to testify in the afternoon, a spokeswoman told the New York Daily News.
Mueller's team has ramped up its efforts to get information from Stone's close associates in recent weeks.
But Miller tried to get a subpoena invalidated last month. U.S. District Chief Judge Beryl Howell ruled the request was valid. Prosecutors told the court Friday that Miller was refusing to testify.
Davis, meanwhile, met with Mueller's team last week for a voluntary interview, sources confirmed to the Daily News.
Miller ran Davis' 2010 gubernatorial bid and also worked with Stone during Trump's 2016 campaign.
Davis, 41, whose arrest for selling prescription pills put an end to her campaign previously admitted to running a high-end escort service that supplied prostitutes to then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
She was subpoenaed by Mueller last month as part of his probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Stone, a longtime ally of Trump, has long been a rumored target of the investigation.
Mueller is reportedly interested in Stone's contacts with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the Twitter handle "Guccifer 2.0," which was allegedly used by Kremlin-linked hackers during the 2016 election to share emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee.
Stone railed against the special counsel in a statement to The News last week.
"(Davis) knows nothing about alleged Russian Collusion, WikiLeaks collaboration or any other impropriety related to the 2016 election which I thought was the subject of this probe," he said.
Miller's legal team said they will attempt to challenge the constitutionality of Mueller's appointment, a tactic that proved unsuccessful for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, now on trial for tax and bank fraud.
University of Richmond School of Law professor Carl Tobias noted that Miller's refusal to testify appeared similar to the President's attempts to discredit the special counsel.
"I think one part of the legal strategy, even from the White House, is to maintain that this is all illegal and should be over with. And this fits with that," Tobias told The News.
