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You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Russiagate Open Thread: Is This the End of Little Roger Stone?

Russiagate Open Thread: Is This the End of Little Roger Stone?

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I don’t think Murphy the Trickster God loves me enough for it to happen, but not even seeing Donny Dollhands dragged weeping out of the Oval Office would make me quite as happy as watching foundational ratfvcker Roger Stone realize he was gonna die in jail. But after half a century of sliding away from his multitudinous crimes — reputedly by always knowing when to be the first to rat out his partners — can the Trumplodyte explosion of amateurs, wannabes, and frothing crazees finally cost Stone his position as the Last Thug Standing?

Politico:

Roger Stone said on Tuesday he was “pleased” that Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide, had said he would cooperate with the federal probe into Russian election meddling after initially vowing to reject a subpoena from special counsel Robert Mueller.

“I would certainly have not advised him to ignore or refuse a document-production subpoena,” Stone, a longtime confidant of President Donald Trump’s, told MSNBC. “I was pleased to read today that he’s changed his mind about that.”…

Stone told MSNBC on Tuesday that he had “no idea” why Nunberg had been so adamant in expressing his opposition to producing documents regarding their communications, saying that Nunberg “marches to his own drummer.”

Stone added that Nunberg was “not speaking at my behest or direction” when he made his remarks.

In a wide-ranging interview, his first since Nunberg’s erratic media tour on Monday, Stone also dismissed the notion that he and Trump had ever spoken about the WikiLeaks hack of Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign….

Stone also denied having contacts with the foreign hacker known as Guccifer 2.0, who released Democratic National Committee documents during the 2016 campaign, prior to the breach of Democratic servers. Stone has previously hailed the hacker as a “hero,” with the two trading messages on Twitter after the breach.

Digby, in Salon, this morning:

…Much like his old pal Donald Trump, Stone has always operated on the legal and ethical fringe while craving the spotlight, which is a dangerous way to live. They are both in their own ways flamboyant thrill-seekers, always dancing on the edge of disaster. So when I first heard that Stone was involved with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign it was anything but surprising. It was even less surprising when Trump allegedly fired him early on. Stone does his best work outside the normal political boundaries.

Stone also has connections to Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who has recently been indicted on multiple charges in Robert Mueller’s investigation. The two men were partners in a high-level Republican lobbying firm that included the notorious strategist Lee Atwater, back in the 1980s.

It’s pretty clear that Stone is implicated in some aspects of the Russia scandal, and it probably has to do with the hacking. He’s been playing fast and loose with his connections to WikiLeaks and the hacker who called himself Guccifer 2.0, as well as ill-advised Twitter previews of hacked materials before they were released.

Stone had also worked with Trump on his earlier aborted presidential runs in 2000 and 2012. By 2014, he’d been working with Trump for some time, preparing for what both men saw as his big chance. By then Stone had brought in a helper named Sam Nunberg to school the candidate on the the issues the GOP base cared about…


That’s Stone standing outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which has been providing asylum to the WikiLeaks founder for the past five years.

Not having any luck embedding Ari Melber’s five-minute “Why Mueller is saving Trump aide Roger Stone for last” video clip, but trust me — it’s worth watching.

Reader Interactions

62Comments

  1. 1.

    GregB

    Roger Stone is the shitheel Zelig of American political ratfuckery.

    The entire lot of them are going down. The question will be how much of the rest of America swirls the bowl and gets flushed with them?

  3. 3.

    Mnemosyne

    If you haven’t seen Little Caesar in years, let me drop this word in your ear: Rico is gay. If you know that going in, you will catch all of the subtle hints they give you, like the fact that he never has a girlfriend and keeps trying to get his best friend to dump his girlfriend.

  4. 4.

    Corner Stone

    Ahhh, GregB. I am glad to see we will be fighting to the death over any dented canned goods left on the shelves at Aldi’s.

  5. 5.

    efgoldman

    Mueller’s shop is the most leakproof organization in the hemisphere, but it’s becoming obvious to even this casual observer that he is tying each and every one of the assholes, one by each, into nice little orange packages with chain link ribbons.
    I expect Kushkie, Uday and Qusay and the designer of ugly bags will be twisting until around the first of May, while the prosecutors decide who to squeeze against who else. Just with what’s public, Kushkie is already burned toast. He may already be in Flynn land.

  6. 6.

    Matt McIrvin

    I’ve been kinda hoping that Mueller doesn’t let everybody get off with a slap on the wrist just for singing about Trump, only to find that he can’t really touch Trump. Seems like it’d be a waste.

  7. 7.

    Mary G

    Soledad O’Brien said something the Chinchilla wrote was bad; he wanted to know, how so?

    It's not accurate. It's not funny. It's not clever. It's not analysis. It's facile. It shows an actual lack of understanding of reality tv (can't believe I'm typing that). It's mediocre. It's a time when viewers need to understand what's going on at the highest levels of govt.— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) March 7, 2018

  8. 8.

    Mnemosyne

    I have to get up at the ass crack of dawn tomorrow for physical therapy. Ugh. I may treat myself to breakfast at Corner Bakery afterwards to make up for it.

  9. 9.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Corner Stone: Incidentally, don’t shop at Aldi’s, they’re non-union as one of the pamphlets I was provided with in my new membership packet informed me.

    Also, I applied there and they never hired me. The manager at a “hiring event” screwed me over by listing me as part-time. They only wanted full-time I gather.

  13. 13.

    patroclus

    Don’t tell Corner Stone, but I think Roger Stone is (or rather was) gay. (Also NPH).

  20. 20.

    Amir Khalid

    @patroclus:
    As a jackal in good standing, Corner Stone would surely never reject one of his relatives for being gay.

    @frosty:
    There’s a Giant grocery chain in Malaysia, too. They’re everywhere, I tells ya!

  21. 21.

    Mary G

    Love the gov:

    At a time of unprecedented political turmoil, Jeff Sessions has come to California to further divide and polarize America. Jeff, these political stunts may be the norm in Washington, but they don’t work here. SAD!!!— Jerry Brown (@JerryBrownGov) March 7, 2018

  29. 29.

    Corner Stone

    @Steve in the ATL: I think Amir was saying he was in a good standing to pontificate. But in any event, let me just say I am for teh gheys. But not the grays! Those alien motherfuckers need to stop abducting me at night and running their tests on me!

  33. 33.

    Major Major Major Major

    So, Digby is great, but Salon is not. Even the website is bad. If you use an adblocker they give you a popup saying you can either turn it off (which renders the site nigh-unusable), or let them hijack your browser to mine cryptocurrency.

  39. 39.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mike J:

    My aunt emailed me as soon as she finished seeing it and said she was going to build an altar for my late father (her brother). You will be happy-sad at the end — the Joe Biden “laugh, but with a tear.”

  42. 42.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I gave my boss the advice I got from raven — the prep liquid is a LOT more palatable if you put it in the freezer for a couple of hours first.

    Overall, the prep was mostly boring. I was completely knocked out for the actual procedure.

  43. 43.

    Steve in the SFO

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: SFO, I think. It’s hard to keep track sometimes . But I post from two different phones and a couple of computers and I forget to update them all on wherever the hell I am.

  45. 45.

    Mike J

    @Major Major Major Major: I’ve heard that, but I’m ultra aggressive with my ad blocker. Haven’t seen it. uBlock Origin says I blocked 71% of the requests on a salon page. Block the js file from being loaded and the site works fine.

    And of course on firefox I just use noscript.

  47. 47.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Mike J: I’m moderately aggro and don’t use noscript and it showed up for me just now. I haven’t read their stuff in I feel like years though, the web site just hasn’t been usable for that long. ETA: And I am not well-disposed to read the content of a site that has that much disdain for their users, regardless.

  48. 48.

    Aleta

    At least Navarro and Ross aren’t hellbent on war like Cheney, Libby and Rumsfeld were.

    I’ve got a whopping headache from just two days of them, Nunberg, Stone, Simona Mangiante and Papadopoulos; and from whomever is codetalking through the reporters to reach whomever today.

    This is a Wapost article about Mattis, Tillerson, Navarro, Cohn, Porter, Kelly, Ross, Lighthizer and Puppet.

  49. 49.

    Ruckus

    @Steve in the SFO:
    I used to think I traveled a lot at my last job. Over 30 weeks a year on the road. Most of that between April and September, which was leave on Thursday, return on Monday, work in the office Tuesday and Wednesday, back on the road, with some special weeks. Like the one in March. Leave on Sunday, work 7 days, fly back to the office. I think my record was 90 days without one day off. On the plus side I did get to sometimes carry large amounts of cash on the airplane, often $30K+.
    I loved my job. If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.

  51. 51.

    Mart

    @Corner Stone: That’s what I am talking about. The aliens forced me to have a mammogram. I protested – I am a dude. The aliens pretended not to hear me. Despite the alien interference, all good, no cancer. Now I know what my wife bitches about – those aliens smush the hell out of the boobs and suddenly tell you to stop breathing just before their machine starts squawking. You then realize you have not taken a breath for about 90 seconds, and you really want to gulp air at that moment. To be honest, the aliens turned out to be very nice after all.

  52. 52.

    patrick II

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?:

    Congratulations. From the sophistication of your writing I assume that is a starting level job for you. My first job was steel mill labor and then garbage man. So you are way ahead of me.
    Garbage man back in the day meant lifting hundreds of steel trash cans a day. And then taking about ten showers when you got home.

  53. 53.

    Aleta

    @Ruckus: The point of the prep is so you won’t hesitate to sign the form that says you may die from the procedure.

  56. 56.

    Ruckus

    @patrick II:
    Had a HS buddy who used to drive a trash truck by himself. (Dad owned the company) He said it was great to get him in shape for hell week during which he’d just laugh at everyone else. He basically was the line. The opposition didn’t get by him. Also knew someone who worked at H.Salt Fish and Chips. No amount of showers got that smell off him.
    Thanks for the reminder that while they weren’t all that enjoyable, my HS era jobs weren’t even close to the worst out there.

  57. 57.

    mark k

    To paraphrase the Jane Alexander character in “All the Presidents Men” …if you guys could get Stone, that would be beautiful!

    Side note: Is Roger Stone amoral or immoral? I say the latter and think Trump (and Miller) is amoral.

  58. 58.

    KithKanan

    @John Revolta: The two brothers who founded Aldi had differences and split the company into two territories back in the 1960s. One of them owns US Aldi stores and the other owns Trader Joes. They’re both ‘Aldi’ and both started as the same company, but they’ve been completely separate for over half a century.

  59. 59.

    prostratedragon

    @Major Major Major Major: If all you want at Salon is to read things and your browser is firefox, try adding NoScript to the adblocker. Also, digby publishes her Salon columns at her place regularly.

    (Wow, I see I’m good and late!)

Comments are closed.