The capture of Roger Stone, Public Enemy #2
You can rest easy in your beds, folks, because the intrepid FBI has captured fearsome process criminal Roger Stone:
A swarm of agents in tactical gear shouting “FBI! Open the door!” outside Roger Stone’s Florida home just before dawn Friday was over the top but intended to send a chilling message to anyone else being eyed in the Mueller investigation — you’re next, former FBI agents told the Herald.
The SWAT-style raid on a white-collar suspect in pajamas went viral Friday, with CNN cameras rolling.
“It was absolutely ridiculous,” said ex-FBI agent Peter Yachmetz. “Doing it at 6 o’clock is extremely early. They were trying to get a point across and it was leaked to CNN. Why?
“It was inappropriate and improper,” added Yachmetz, an agent for three decades. “I cannot recall banging on anyone’s door at 6 a.m. for a white-collar crime. I did do it once in a kidnapping and extortion case.”
Yachmetz said the pre-dawn arrest was likely orchestrated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office working in tandem with the Mueller team.
“It’s a message for everyone else connected to the investigation,” said retired FBI supervisory special agent Todd Hulsey. “They are saying, ‘If you think we have something on you, we are going to get you.’ And it’s going to be an unpleasant arrest.
Every single decision Mueller has made seems to have one goal: to get Trump’s aides and former aides to implicate him, much as you pressure a petty drug dealer to implicate the higher-up drug czars.
So far, nada. And it has a high potential for a false confession in order to get leniency. But hey, that won’t stop Mueller. His motivation to do this sort of thing is no doubt increasing, too. The longer it goes on without him getting the goods on Trump, the more embarrassed he must feel. Thus, the screws must be turned up for those watching the arrest of Stone, and for Stone himself.
Here’s what Stone is saying:
There is no circumstance whatsoever under which I will bear false witness against the president, nor will I make up lies to ease the pressure on myself…I look forward to being fully and completely vindicated.
Time will tell.
And here’s my favorite liberal lawyer, Alan Dershowitz:
“This is typical of Mueller. He has found almost no crimes that occurred before he was appointed special counsel,” Dershowitz explained, adding that Mueller was appointed to find Russian collusion and has “virtually failed in that respect in every regard.”
…”In this indictment, [Mueller] tells stories about alleged collusion, stories about WikiLeaks, but that’s not the basis for the indictment. The basis for the indictment are all events that occurred after [Mueller] was appointed. That’s very significant.”
Dershowitz said the president should be nervous because although he is not implicated in the indictment, the point of the indictment appears to be to squeeze Stone into testifying against him because the real target is Trump.
Ya think?
And my favorite lawyer on the right, Andrew C. McCarthy:
The indictment is just the latest blatant demonstration that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office, the Department of Justice, and the FBI have known for many months that there was no such conspiracy [between the Trump campaign and Russia]. And yet, fully aware that the Obama administration, the Justice Department, and the FBI had assiduously crafted a public narrative that Trump may have been in cahoots with the Russian regime, they have allowed that cloud of suspicion to hover over the presidency — over the Trump administration’s efforts to govern — heedless of the damage to the country.
They haven’t just allowed that cloud of suspicion to hover—they’ve made sure it hovers. And that’s what McCarthy also goes on to state:
Not only was the suggestion of a Trump-Russia conspiracy not founded on fact. The officials calling the shots had reason to know that the premise was factually false. In truth, there was no evidence of Trump-campaign complicity in Russian espionage — nothing but the Clinton-campaign generated, unverified Steele dossier. The months-in-the-making Stone indictment is just the latest proof of that.
Yet investigators were not just content to let the country believe there was a Trump-Russia criminal conspiracy; they affirmatively encouraged the public to believe it was true. Even as they indicted people for providing misleading information and then failing to correct the record, they never themselves corrected the misimpression they had gratuitously created in public statements…
And what do we learn? That the Trump campaign did not know what WikiLeaks had. That is, in addition to being uninvolved in Russia’s espionage, the Trump campaign was uninvolved in Julian Assange’s acquisition of what Russia stole.
The Stone indictment reads like an episode of The Three Stooges. Stone and two associates — conservative writer and conspiracy theorist Jerry Corsi, and left-wing-comedian-turned-radio-host Randy Credico, respectively denominated “Person 1” and “Person 2” — are on a quest to find out what WikiLeaks has on Hillary Clinton and when Assange is going to publicize it. But that does not suit Stone, who has cultivated an image of political dirty trickster and plugged-in soothsayer. In public, then, Stone pretends to know more than he knows and to have an insider’s view of Assange’s operation; behind the scenes, he scrounges around for clues about what Assange is up to, hoping some insider will tell him…
Plainly, the campaign was not involved in the hacking, so it did not know what the Russians gave Assange. And it had no involvement with WikiLeaks’ operations, so it turned to Stone, who had held himself out as a knowledgeable source. But Stone, too, was unsure.
Much much more at the link.
[NOTE: Why did I write that Roger Stone was Public Enemy #2? Who is Public Enemy #1? Why, President Trump, of course!]
The whole predawn raid on Stone’s house was horrific, but it could have been even worse.
Mrs. Stone is deaf. What if the agents shouted instructions/commands at her which she couldn’t hear? Would they have roughed her up? Shot her?
Really terrifying possibilities by super aggressive men.
Trump hacked the dnc together with the russians, and trump has always been putin’s pet since the time he spent in Moscow and has maintained communication with him ever since, that is why he deployed stone to find out what wiki leaks had and trump jr to meet the fake putin agent to find out what dirt putin got on Hillary
If you found my above statement logically unsound or incomprehensible, congratulations, you are not a democrat or leftist.
Thank you Dave. I would add the word lunatic to your list that I am not.
Let me give you another one, trump had a secret communication channel with putin, he was also very careful with concealing the relationship and was doing a great job covering up all tracks avoiding discovery by every intelligence agency trying to get him along with the Obama administration, and yet he let a fake putin agent inside trump tower.
Liberal is conservative who went through lobotomy.
You might be living in a fascist state when they send more armed men to arrest a 66 year old public figure under fabricated charges than to rescue Americans in Benghazi.
I’m glad I passed Dave’s test.
If trump was talking to putin the whole time with a secret channel has yet discovered, all he needed to do to find out if that female lawyer was a fake is making a call to putin and personally ask
“Hey Vlad, some woman contacted my son claiming she has something for me from you, is she legit”
“No Don, if I have something for you I can give you directly through our henchmen manafort and Cohen”
Sessions’ recusal from this circus will always be, rightfully, held against him. Will acting AG Whitaker be able to stop a “rogue DOJ”?
I hope so. I expect a little improvement, and lots of, often illegal, CYA & “technical” problems to hide most of the worst crimes the criminal Deep State has been doing.
Unfortunately, while I believe Trump is innocent of collusion, I suspect his hands are not totally clean of all crimes. Not sure what will happen. I’m very glad Sarah Sanders and Trump are both talking about how the “FBI” has terrible double standards; Clinton & Comey both lied. They should both be indicted. I hope they will be.
But I always thought Martha Stewart was public enemy number 1. I was so relieved when the FBI sent her off to the big house. At last I could sleep peacefully, no more having to watch Martha Bakes on public TV.
Just remember that Comey and Mueller were in charge of the FBI when they falsely convicted and imprisoned people for murder. Sending people they knew to be innocent to prison is not the thing honorable, ethical honest people do.
From “The FBI’s ridiculous riot gear and pre-dawn raid on Roger Stone was excessive and unnecessary” in the Washington Examiner:
Stone seems to be a loudmouth braggart, which is what got him in trouble. It’s pretty sad when the Mueller team feels called to follow this kind of thing and indict. And how could Stone “flip” on Trump? There’s nothing to flip, unless Mueller & Co. want perjury — and maybe they do.
There’s nothing to flip, unless Mueller & Co. want perjury — and maybe they do.
do you think a Nazi like Müller would hesitate?
hell he wants to turn Jared into a lampshade
Currently I’m reading the book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, by Harvey Silverglate. His book demonstrates that Lavrently Beria’s statement “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” is just as apropos for the corrupt modern US Federal justice system as for the KGB in Stalin’s day. So far the FBI isn’t murdering very many people yet but they are moving rapidly in that direction.
Neo: “And it has a high potential for a false confession in order to get leniency.”
If you do it it’s witness tampering and/or subornation of perjury. If the government does it…
Stone was indicted for witness tampering for making a statement concerning what Person #2 should say to the government about certain matters. As far as I can tell neither Stone nor Person #2 was under indictment at the time and not on any witness list.
This is an outrageous assault on the First Amendment. It is an ex post facto criminalization of speech. The clear meaning is that if any citizen says anything about anything that might attract the government’s steely gaze they can be disappeared.
Stasi, KGB, NKVD, FBI, DOJ. Yup, the secret police.
What if the things Stone wanted his pal to tell the Fed were the truth? Does it make it illegal just because whoever in charge doesn’t like that story and wanted the other story to be true? So is it illegal now for someone to tell another person “don’t lie about me in front of the FBI”?
Is Ford’s FBI friend is going to get indicted as well for persuading their former friend to change her story about Kavanaugh and the party that never happened? Silly me, of course not, she is on the correct side, she could break any laws she wanted in her quest to catch the serial gang rapist. sad Justice as fairness is not a principle our justice department is concerned of.
Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.” [from the original Ian Fleming novel] …
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/robert-mueller-paul-manafort-investigation
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/special-counsel-mueller-asked-about-michael-cohen-trump-campaign-involvement-after-fbi-raid.html
Ann on January 26, 2019 at 4:53 pm at 4:53 pm said:
From “The FBI’s ridiculous riot gear and pre-dawn raid on Roger Stone was excessive and unnecessary” in the Washington Examiner:
* * *
Even more to the point:
Why does Mueller even have the authority to send the FBI on raids at all?
Would this not have required an approval from someone like, oh, maybe the Director of the FBI? Where is he in all this nonsense?
AesopFan,’
The FBI Director knows which side of his bread substitute has the ersatz margarine on it, and it ain’t Trump’s side.
Jonathan Turley is not impressed, on several counts.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/01/25/roger-stone-charges-indictment-richard-nixon-what-do-politician-column/2678017002/
Will legions of journalists comb these documents for PROOOOOFFFFF that Donald Trump colluded with Russians?
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/01/massive_number_of_hacked_russian_documents_posted_online.html
Hopefully, this will keep them too busy to make twits of themselves again for awhile.
This argument doesn’t fit here.
Judge T. S. Ellis III made this point in the Manafort trial. The underlying logic was: since the crimes in question had nothing to do with Russia’s conspiracy to elect Donald Trump President, the only reason Meuller was prosecuting Manafort was to get to Trump. Meuller replied that the case does indeed involve the aforementioned conspiracy. The rest of the argument is redacted to there is no way for us to judge.
But this is clearly not the case here. Stone is accused of lying about the central event in the conspiracy: Russia’s hacking of the DNC. He also tried to get another witness to lie, threatening him and even his dog.
Any reasonable prosecutor would prosecute, and prosecute from within in own office. If someone robs your house and a witness who stands to gain from the robbery destroys evidence of wrongdoing while threatening to kill the dog of another witness if he doesn’t lie, you’d want that “process” criminal’s ass in prison as much as the robbers themselves.
But this is clearly not the case here. Stone is accused of lying about the central event in the conspiracy: Russia’s hacking of the DNC. He also tried to get another witness to lie, threatening him and even his dog.
I see the DNC theme shop works on weekends. Nice try. Stone is a loner, fired by Trump in 2015, who keeps trying to build a media image as a tough guy. He had no role other than hanger on. You might read Andy McCarthy’s column in NRO today. But you won’t because you are a bot or a DNC clone.
Stone Indictment Underscores That There Was No Trump-Russia Conspiracy
Now, it’s your turn to read.
These kinds of over the top, out of control, government Gestapo tactics started quite some time ago with Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Elian Gonzales.
Who can forget the image below:
https://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/elian-gonzalez.jpg
Ya know, one would think that FBI agents killing 76 civilians–burning or gassing them to death, several of them women and children, would be a big deal, would call for massive invetigations of every aspect of this slaughter but, it passed with hardly a peep.
Yachmetz said the pre-dawn arrest was likely orchestrated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office working in tandem with the Mueller team.
Another reason to dismember the Department of Justice. At the local level, the police department and the sheriff investigate, the district attorney presents the fruit of investigations in court.
Snow on Pine:
“Hardly a peep”? I’ve heard (and read) many many many peeps on the subject.
It was a terrible situation and hindsight says that it wasn’t handled well. I know that many people are certain the deaths were deliberate on the part of the government; I don’t think so. There has been, however, evidence introduced in trials, many books written, as well as this investigation by the DOJ. Of course, a government investigation wouldn’t convince anyone who believes the government did it deliberately, but is nevertheless a “peep,” There was also this investigation by the House, and also this.
Ya know, one would think that FBI agents killing 76 civilians–burning or gassing them to death, several of them women and children, would be a big deal, would call for massive invetigations of every aspect of this slaughter but, it passed with hardly a peep.
You recall that Bilge Clinton hired as his attorney-general Janet Reno, who had a history of prosecutorial abuse in Dade County. First she says re Waco that she took ‘full responsibility’. Then she says there would be ‘no recriminations’. Unlike the rest of the media, RM Kaus understood this woman’s maneuvers and character in real time.
As egregious as Waco was Ruby Ridge, where the FBI sent a small army to arrest a man for…missing a court date on a weapons charge. The weapons charge was the fruit of the machinations of an agent provacateur. The FBI killed two people, one the wife and one the 11 year old son of their object. Their object was a somewhat loosely-wired eccentric who lived in the middle of nowhere and wasn’t trouble to anyone.
I wonder how Barr will react to this arrest. At the hearings, he stated he knew Meuller and he would never be involved in a witchhunt.
Shortly after that Meuller’s office denied the veracity of the Buzzfeed story. I wonder if that was the response to Barr’s statement at his hearing.
If, in fact, this is as egregious as it appears, will Barr let this continue or will he rein in Mueller’s investigation?
Neo–Investigations and angry editorials are one thing, prosecutions and guilty verdicts are another.
If I remember correctly, I’ve read that the FBI official in charge at Waco was subsequently promoted, and that Lon Horiuchi, the FBI sniper who shot and killed Vicki Weaver while she was holding her 10 month old in her arms–Vicki not armed, not a threat to anyone, and not wanted for anything–who was initially charged with involuntary manslaughter–had those charges against him dropped when the Federal government invoked the Supremacy Clause, and took the State prosecution against Horiuchi into Federal court, and they were eventually dismissed.
I believe I read somewhere that Horiuchi was also subsequently promoted.
Snow on Pine:
I was just responding to the fact that you seemed to be saying there had been no investigations. There were many investigations.
Snow on Pine on January 27, 2019 at 9:31 pm at 9:31 pm said:
Neo–Investigations and angry editorials are one thing, prosecutions and guilty verdicts are another.
* * *
When there are no serious consequences for illegal or unethical actions by the feds (such as any of us would suffer), we tend to forget that they were “investigated” — by their own side.
It worked for Obama and the Clintons as well.
One of these days, we’re going to have a scenario that goes:
6:00 am — “Hello, intruder. This is the Security AI for this property. You very much look like a home invasion force. The property owner is here, asleep, so I am authorized to use lethal force to protect him. Please note that yelling ‘Police!’, ‘FBI!’, ‘Emergency!’, or the like is unlikely to do any good — first, it would have to be a really stupid home invader who wouldn’t also do this; and, second, among my many sensors, there are none that can interpret speech. Please vacate the property immediately. If you are actual law enforcement, please present your bona fides at my lawyer’s office during business hours.”
6:01-6:05 am — repeats message in various languages
6:06 am — *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*, *BLAM*.
11:13 am — “Hello, local police department? I got up this morning about an hour ago, made a pot of tea, had bacon and eggs, and just now looked out the window. There are about 20 bodies on my lawn, apparently in some sort of assault gear. Do you have any idea WTF is going on here?”
I think it’ll be a very interesting court case.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Mueller has accomplished an almost impossible task. He has made Roger Stone a sympathetic figure.
cthulhu — Many years ago, a guy I knew in Philly who worked for General Electric — when there was a real GE — had a very legitimate-looking sticker for his window. It read:
WARNING: This property protected by General Electric 20 mm Vulcan automatic guns.
At General Electric, progress is our most important product
Remember in the ’50s and ’60s when the Left hated the FBI — J. Edgar Hoover, Cointelpro, black bag jobs, and all that?
“Oh, the times, they are a-changing!” — B. Dylan
Andrew McCarthy has provided some of the best insights into this mess, but even he perpetuates the myth that it is a fact that the Russians hacked the DNC. At best it is an allegation, contradicted by Assange himself and by analysis that shows the download speeds for the data are way too high to have been done over the internet. Much more likely directly downloaded from the server onto a flash drive.
cthulhu–I don’t know if I would want to place great reliance on anything electronic that is computer driven.
See below the story about how a family was terrorized, both parents and their 8 year old child–an act which could have had major and possibly deadly consequences–by someone hacking into their in NEST home security system, and using it to broadcast what sounded like an official announcement of an incoming nuclear attack by North Korean ICBMs.
See https://pjmedia.com/trending/five-minutes-of-sheer-terror-hackers-infiltrate-nest-device-announce-incoming-missile-attack/
Re: Snow on Pine —
Electronic and computer-driven are not the issues. It’s whether you own it. You don’t own NEST, you don’t own RING, you don’t own Windows X, you don’t own Android, and you don’t own iOS. You certainly don’t own corporate eavesdropping devices from Amazon or Google.
But we live in an era where amazing things can be done on the cheap for those who own their systems.
Now, Stone claims that during this raid, Stone’s apparently deaf wife was pulled out of the house by FBI agents and made to stand outside, next to the cuffed Stone, barefoot and in her nightgown. (Did they let her get her hearing aids before they pulled her out of the house?)
If 72 year old Stone was so potentially “dangerous” that arresting him required such a massive raid and so much firepower, one wonders what could have happened if Stone’s deaf wife–possibly equally dangerous–couldn’t hear and respond to FBI commands.
Could/would she have been shot?
See: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/01/cnn-hid-this-fbi-thugs-forced-roger-stones-wife-to-stand-outside-barefoot-in-nightgown-during-home-raid-video/
PowerLine quoting Tucker Carlson
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/mysteries-of-the-mueller-probe-contd.php
“…they just refused to answer.” (finished the transcription)
A PL commenter picks up an interesting point:
Does anyone else know anything about this person’s connections?
And that’s the way it is.
Also from PowerLines commenters, an apt cartoon.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a515e90a4d6f551895a460b9c29a32a84526612106c49d8b7f43987ad5349515.jpg