Get me Roger Stone

At long last.

So, it was true - the Grand Jury did meet yesterday.

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Authorities in the United States have arrested Roger Stone, an associate of President Donald Trump for alleged witness tampering and other crimes.

The Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office on Friday said Stone was arrested in Florida by the FBI following a grand jury indictment.

  alJazeera

That'll do for a start.

The Associated Press news agency reported that the indictment lays out Stone's conversations about stolen emails from the Democratic Party posted by WikiLeaks ahead of the election.

[...]

Stone has been charged on seven counts, including one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements and one count of witness tampering.

Stone is scheduled to make a court appearance later on Friday.

This is no surprise to Stone. It'll be interesting to see what he pleads.

“Robert Mueller is coming for me,” Stone wrote to supporters in August last year, before asserting that his name was next on what he called Mueller’s “hit list” of targets. Stone denied wrongdoing and said he faced legal peril simply because he had advised Trump for several decades.

[...]

Mueller’s indictment alleges that during the summer of 2016 Stone spoke to senior Trump campaign officials about WikiLeaks “and information it might have had that would be damaging to the [Hillary] Clinton campaign. Stone was contacted by senior Trump campaign officials to inquire about future releases by” WikiLeaks, which the document refers to as “Organization 1”.

“On multiple occasions, Stone told senior Trump campaign officials about materials possessed by Organization 1 and the timing of future releases,” the document states.

It also alleges that Stone – a longtime political adviser to Trump – made “multiple false statements” about his interactions regarding WikiLeaks, and “falsely denied possessing records that contained evidence of these interactions”, and “attempted to persuade a witness to provide false testimony to and withhold pertinent information from the investigations”.

[...]

“Shortly after [WikiLeaks’] release, an associate of [a] high-ranking Trump campaign official sent a text message to Stone that read ‘well done’.

[...]

Asked if he had no emails or other communications relating to Wikileaks and the hacked Democratic documents, Stone allegedly said: “That is correct. Not to my knowledge.”

The indictment states: “In truth and in fact, Stone had sent and received numerous emails and text messages during the 2016 campaign in which he discussed Organization 1, its head, and its possession of hacked emails.”

  The Guardian

Like Cohen, because he knew that's what Trump wanted. I doubt if he'll give up Trump by saying he was being directed by him. He'll be looking for a pardon. But, who knows? Trump is an unreliable friend.

It was Stone who first recommended that Trump’s team hire as its campaign manager Paul Manafort, who has been found guilty on eight counts of financial crimes and is said to have breached a plea agreement with the special counsel.

Manafort will make his first court appearance in months on Friday as prosecutors and defence lawyers argue over whether he intentionally lied to investigators.

A busy day in the Mueller investigation courts today.

BTW, I'm guessing Jerome Corsi is the witness Stone attempted to suborn. Randy Credico?*

Now, get me Jared and Junior.

UPDATE:




* Credico



UPDATE:

According to several published reports, the "senior Trump campaign official" mentioned here was Steve Bannon, which makes the phrase "was directed to contact Stone" even more intriguing. At that point in the campaign, the universe of people who could "direct" Bannon to do anything was a tiny one, and several of them had the same last name.

  Charles P Pierce

UPDATE:



There's a good reason for that:  That's what he is.