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They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

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Shut up, hissy kitty!

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

I was promised a recession.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

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Fight them, without becoming them!

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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Trump Crime Cartel Open Thread: Has Stone Roger’d Himself?

Trump Crime Cartel Open Thread: Has Stone Roger’d Himself?

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He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede…

Per CNN:

Roger Stone said Thursday that he does not have a joint defense agreement with President Donald Trump’s legal team, nor are the two sides sharing information.
Stone, an informal political adviser to the President who was in Washington for a speech, also said he is refusing to testify now to the Senate because it would not be public testimony, despite previously testifying before the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors.

“Because I am clearly under investigation now and no attorney in their right mind would allow you to put yourself in that jeopardy,” Stone said when asked why he wouldn’t testify to the Senate. “Because this is not about Russian collusion, it’s about the parsing of words. It’s about process crimes and perjury traps, and I decline to participate.”

He said he would be willing to reconsider requests from the Senate if he could testify publicly.

Stone would not say if he would invoke his FIfth Amendment right to not testify in order to avoid incriminating himself if contacted by special counsel Robert Mueller, telling reporters that was a “hypothetical.”…

From Politico, “Why Roger Stone won’t shut up”:

Defying the advice of pretty much every defense lawyer in America, Roger Stone won’t stop talking.

The longtime political adviser to President Donald Trump gives lengthy interviews about his role in the 2016 presidential election. He writes combative op-eds about Robert Mueller, who is investigating him. He invites reporters into his home for open-ended hangout sessions.

It’s all part of a pre-emptive counterattack against the special counsel’s Russia investigation, which many legal experts believe is inexorably closing in on Stone.

And if you didn’t know better, you might think Stone is enjoying himself…

…[H]e appears unfazed that his media saturation makes him an open book for Mueller’s prosecutors as they assess whether the truth of the 2016 campaign makes him a criminal or just a crude braggart. Even lawyers he’s consulted with admit it’s a risky move considering Mueller has held other people’s public commentary against them in court.

But a clear reminder of the benefit of being in the public eye came on Monday, when Trump cited Stone’s vow, made on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” a day earlier, that he would never testify against the president. Trump approvingly tweeted that the stance took “guts!”

The next day, Stone’s friend and former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo sent out a mass email announcing the creation of a GoFundMe legal defense fund for Stone’s legal bills “to pay the costs he’s incurring due to his two year torture.” Caputo said Stone, who posted an Instagram image of himself last month wearing sunglasses and smoking a cigar in a beach chair, has “lost everything.”

“Staying quiet isn’t going to attract contributions,” said Kendall Coffey, a Miami-based former federal prosecutor who briefly discussed joining Stone’s legal defense team in mid-2017. “Staying low profile offers no benefits for him.”…

Well, Michael Cohen’s sentencing is due tomorrow, but people are trying not to get our hopes up…

Reader Interactions

42Comments

  1. 1.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    Potentially related, CNN has recently reported that Andrew McCabe opened up an obstruction of justice investigation into Trump before Trump fired McCabe, meaning that McCabe’s firing itself, in addition to being a fuck-you that provided little direct benefit to the president* (remember, McCabe was just about to retire anyway; the only “benefit” of firing McCabe was that he wouldn’t get a pension), may potentially have constituted obstruction of justice. Would like more explication of this from one of our lawyer types if possible, but it seems potentially big.

    Can we please have new showrunners? This is one of the most predetermined ‘plot twists’ of the past two years (just after “Florida elections go to recounts”). I must commend the writers on their expert usage of dramatic irony, but this show remains unwatchable, implausible, and largely devoid of sympathetic characters.

  2. 2.

    SFAW

    FSM doesn’t love me enough to have Stone be convicted of something that carries a minimum 20-year sentence, but I will make a burnt marinara offering to it, in hopes that its orechiette will hear my prayers.

  3. 3.

    AThornton

    Imagine the outcry if China had had Steve Jobs arrested in Japan on unspecified, secret, charges.

    That’s what the US had Canada do to Meng Wanzhou.

    This is a Big Deal.

    The word “hostage” is already being used.

  4. 4.

    Platonailedit

    None of the totus & rethug assholes will stop talking/blabbering because they know the system is historically weak and corrupt and they will get away with it all.

  5. 5.

    jl

    The pointless micro-aggression against coyotes is noted. Always remember, animals are innocent.
    And suspect any coyote involved would be the trickster spirit, getting ready to show Roger how it should be done.

    But speaking of ‘always hungry’ as long as that came up, do they not provide free food at these shindigs? That alone should get a bigger crowd.

    In these situations, a person like myself, would duck in and out so quick that would be no picture of me sitting down. But if you have a good spread, I might decide to go for seconds, or if allowed, do a two-plates-at-once raid and really load up. Then I’d be there long enough for a pic.

    Maybe if AL would let us know beforehand so we could drop by and help them out. It’s supposed to be a full service blog.

  9. 9.

    Ken

    I see we’ve finally got to the point where they have to admit crimes were committed, even if they’re calling them “process crimes”.

  10. 10.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @AThornton:

    In fact, whenever I talk to Huawei executives privately they tell me how frustrated they are because of how the US government and Western media unfairly paints them as a Chinese state-owned company that does Beijing’s bidding.

    As much as I am suspicious of this arrest, that’s one of the silliest lines ever. China is even worse than Russia in this regard, because in China it’s official. Every company, from a lemonade stand to an international conglomerate, is under the thumb of some level of the Chinese government. Huawei is directly doing Beijing’s bidding, even if that’s ‘We have no orders for now.’

  11. 11.

    guachi

    @AThornton: Huawei isn’t a company to be trusted. I’d not advise any Americans buy Huawei products. I’m not really bothered by their CFO being arrested.

  17. 17.

    Jay

    @cain:

    US Arrest Warrants are honoured in Canada.

    The next step is an extradition hearing, where in the US presents it’s case for extradition to the US, and the Defence presents their case against extradition.

    If the US can’t “make” their case, she walks free.

    But it’s a lengthy process.

  18. 18.

    Emma

    @guachi: Well, I am. I do not own now, or have owned, any Huawei product. BUT I would like the US to put up or shut up. Whisking the CEO of a foreign company off planes without saying why, while in the middle of a trade war with that person’s country of origin/business home, stinks to high heaven. If it turns out they have evidence, good. If not, the Chinese will go to (diplomatic and commercial) war.

  19. 19.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Frankensteinbeck: Mainland Chinese [as opposed to Taiwanese] state-owned firms have clear legal mandates to engage in intellectual property theft. It’s right out in the open. I had a colleague who went to debug a software application sold to Huawei on a big-ass machine. The conditions under which he could come onsite to debug, were that he had to provide source versions of ALL tools he used, and (this part might be sketchy) clear descriptions of his methods. To be clear, that never happened with Taiwanese or Japanese customers. Never. Never.

    Frankly, as a patriotic American, I’d sooner let any firm that operated under such rules … rot. Fuck them.

  20. 20.

    Mary G

    @Mnemosyne: Ha! I bet the worst punishment Roger Stone feels he is currently receiving is being ignored. Standing in front of those 12 people must have been humiliating. Good. Now go to jail, too.

  22. 22.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    Y’know, Roger, “process crimes” are still crimes, y’know. If you willingly obstruct an investigation or commit perjury while under oath, you’re still committing a crime.

  28. 28.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Major Major Major Major:
    I seem to remember a conversation we had last year that involved archiving. Yeah, it was the Memory of Man thing that I contributed to info to. I ended up getting a cool ceramic medallion that showed the location of the salt mine where all of the ceramic plates will be buried.

    You bringing that up reminded me.

  38. 38.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    trump is tweeting

    47m47 minutes ago
    FAKE NEWS – THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!

    are indictees informed beforehand? does their lawyer get a call that says, ‘have your client in courtroom X tomorrow at 10 am’?

  39. 39.

    Baron Elmo

    Um, yeah, about that GoFundMe legal defense fund for Roger Stone:

    Usually people who are about to be indicted in high-profile cases try to keep a low profile. The self-described “dirty trickster” Roger Stone is doing the exact opposite, defying the advice of just about every defense lawyer in the country. He gives media interviews constantly, writes op-eds about Robert Mueller, and holds bull sessions with reporters at his home.

    The reason for all the publicity may well be simple: He needs money—a lot of money—to pay lawyers for the deluge about to happen when he is indicted, which probably is fairly soon. So naturally he is trying to raise it on a GoFundMe.com. There appear to be five active campaigns raising money for him. So far they have raised $4,802, $3,798, $0, $0, and $0, respectively. That should cover, oh, about 8 or 10 hours of good-quality legal work.

    [Cue sad trombone.)

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