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“Roger was a victim of a corrupt and illegal Witch Hunt, one which will go down as the greatest political crime in history. He can sleep well at night!,” the president tweeted yesterday. Which is an odd way to describe a unanimous jury verdict and conviction secured by his own Justice Department, but Donald Trump’s commitment to logical consistency is spotty at best.
Trump was responding to a tweet by conservative agitator Charlie Kirk, who went to college for five minutes before dropping out to write books about the scam of higher education and practice the art of wingnut grifting full time.
The president duly RT’d. Which is probably not an official pardon.
Here on Planet Earth, Roger Stone was convicted of lying to congress, obstruction, and tampering with a witness. Because when the House Intelligence Committee asked him “So you have no emails to anyone concerning the allegations of hacked documents . . . or any discussions you have had with third parties about Julian Assange? You have no emails, no texts, no documents whatsoever, any kind of that nature?” Roger Stone said, “That is correct.”
In fact, he had multiple exchanges with conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi and shock jock Randy Credico exhorting them to use their connections to find out which stolen Clinton campaign emails Wikileaks had received from the Russians, and when they were going to be released.
“Get to Assange at Ecuadorian Embassy in London and get the pending Wikileaks emails . . . they deal with Foundation, allegedly,” he texted Corsi on July 25, 2016.
“Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging,” Corsi emailed Stone on August 2, 2016.
Then Stone tried desperately to throw the Intel Committee off the trail by leading them to believe that Credico was his connection to Assange, and Corsi was not, going so far as to threaten to kidnap Credico’s dog if he wouldn’t go along with the deception when he testified before congress. And he did it all by text, leaving a digital trail a mile wide. Which is why a jury of his peers found him guilty on all seven counts.
After an angry Trump tweet, Bill Barr leapt in to cut the legs out from under the Stone prosecutors, forcing them to walk back their own nine year sentencing recommendation in favor a mealy-mouthed statement that they’d rely on the court to be fair. This prompted four line attorneys to withdraw from the case, with one resigning from the DOJ entirely. But apparently this intervention for Donald Trump’s pal Roger, won’t cut it, because it still winds up with him serving time like any other criminal.
Without further intervention, Stone will have to report to serve his sentence on June 30. But, as Josh Gerstein at Politico notes, while Stone has appealed his conviction, he hasn’t moved postpone serving the sentence. Does he have it on good information that he can “sleep well at night” because he’ll never serve a night in jail?
We’ll have to watch Trump’s twitter feed to find out.
“LAW AND ORDER!” the president tweeted last night, without a hint of irony.
Indictment [U.S. v. Roger Stone, No. 1:19-cr-00018-ABJ (D.D.C. January 24, 2019)]
Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.