Your Honor, we're very sorry

Roger Stone's lawyers apologized on Monday for failing to disclose that Stone was in the middle of releasing a book while under a gag order.

  Business Insider

Please, Judge Jackson, don't get any madder.

On March 1, his lawyers said in a court filing that his book would be "imminently release[d]," when in fact it had been available online since February 19. The judge accused Stone's lawyers of using his case to drum up publicity for the book and warned that any "costs or consequences" Stone faced as a result would be his own doing.

Did they think she was a dummy like them?

"There was/is no intention to hide anything," Stone's lawyer wrote in Monday's filing. "Having been scolded, we seek only to defend Mr. Stone and move ahead without further ado."

LOL. We've tried all our tricks and failed. Now let's go forward with a clean slate. Okay?

But in an email Stone wrote to Skyhorse Publishing editor Michael Campbell on February 15 — six days before the gag order was imposed — he expressed concerns that a potential gag order would interfere with the promotion of his book.

[...]

"Recognize that the judge may issue a gag order any day now and while we will appeal it, that could take a while," Stone wrote to Campbell on February 15.

He discussed that with his publisher but not his lawyers?  I'm feeling skeptical. 

Stone's lawyers [...] denied using a March 1 court filing to drum up publicity for the book. Though they wrote in the filing that the book would be "imminently release[d]," it had been available online since February 19. [...] [ A few days after the March 1 filing, Jackson found that Stone deliberately waited until after the book's publication to disclose plans for publication that had been underway for weeks. The timing, she said, suggested his lawyers were using his case to spin publicity for the book. She added that any "costs or consequences" that result from the mix-up are Stone's responsibility.

Rogow acknowledged the error in the March 1 filing, saying that Stone had reminded his lawyers of the book after the gag order was issued on February 21.

Sure.

"The new introduction, post February 21, 2019, presented a question we tried, obviously clumsily, to address."

No intentional attempt to hide. Just clumsy. Let's put this all behind us.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.