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Roger Stone has been in the news a lot again-a la Sam Nunberg and also regarding Ted Malloch who the Mueller team just served a subpoena at the airport. Malloch-as Glenn Simpson said last year-could be a ‘significant’ figure regarding Stone and Wikileaks. 

While the House GOP shamefully ended the Russia prematurely-even worse they claimed there was no collusion without interviewing George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, or Michael Flynn-among many other witnesses who are material for ascertaining collusion-the Dems are not stopping. They are continuing to investigate-hopefully they will have a Democratic House next year so they can use subpoena power and hold public hearings

In addition, they announced they may be seeking prosecution of witnesses who mislead the House Intelligence Committee. One of those witnesses is: Roger Stone.

According to a source close to the committee, Democrats firmed up their plans to pursue criminal referrals this past week after their Republican colleagues abruptly announced they were ending the panel’s investigation. Democrats would send the referrals to the Justice Department and potentially directly to special counsel Robert Mueller.

Schiff and other Democrats have recently questioned the truthfulness of the testimony provided by three witnesses: Erik Prince, the former head of the security firm Blackwater and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; Carter Page, a former Trump campaign national security aide; and Roger Stone, a longtime Trump political adviser. ”

Stone had falsely claimed to never have communicated with Assange-then Twitter DM messages between he and Wikileaks emerged.

Erik Prince mischaracterized his meeting in Seychelles as just personal and social:

Prince said during a November 30 committee interview that a United Arab Emirates-brokered meeting he had in the Seychelles with a Russian fund manager close to Russian President Vladimir Putin was unplanned. But recent reports suggest Mueller has information showing the meeting was part of an effort by Trump’s transition team to set up back-channel communications with the Kremlin.”

Then there’s the rather wild and wooly Carter Page who talks so much publicly some wonder about his sanity:

In his testimony to the committee last fall, Page first denied and then downplayed meetings with Russian officials during a July 2016 trip he took to Moscow. In a memo last month, Schiff said the FBI has information that contradicts Page’s claims.

Schiff says he is “not sure that any referral is necessary” for false claims that Prince and Page may have made. Transcripts of those interviews are public, so Mueller’s team already has the ability to review and assess those witnesses’ claims against information they have gathered. A transcript of Stone’s September 26, 2017, interview, however, has not been made public. ”

This is one that sorely needs to be made public.

 

To be sure, the GOP’s investigation amounted to little beyond asking witnesses if they colluded-and when the witness said ‘no’ the GOP declared: ‘well, there you go-there was no collusion.’ So in many cases there’s no ability to judge wether or not a witness was telling the truth or not as the GOP didn’t even attempt to corroborate their story:

But new reports that contradict the truthfulness of witnesses testimony could result in referrals down the road. “As additional things come to light, if there are reports of witnesses saying things that are inconsistent with what has been said to the committee, that list could grow,” Schiff says.

Democrats say they remain open to Republicans joining them in referrals to Mueller, though Republicans would likely oppose such efforts. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a senior committee member, dismissed Democrats’ potential efforts to refer witnesses for prosecution: “Those guys just keep trying.”

So Peter King considers trying to get to the bottom of Russia’s interference in our election to be a bad thing. Good to know.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this chapter on May 17, 2018 there’s a lot of water under the bridge. At least in the unredacted Mueller Report the question of the full scope of Carter Page’s activities in Moscow remains elusive.

As for perjury, of course, Michael Cohen has been convicted for perjury among other offenses and his now serving a three year prison term. He had lied to Congress about when the Trump Tower Moscow project was tabled. While he’s in prison for the lies he told at the direction of ‘President Trump’-Jay Sekulow representing Trump directed Cohen to lie-as well as the payments to women Trump has extramarital affairs with-there have as yet been no consequences for the unduly elected ‘President.’

Roger Stone also perjured himself before Congress-regarding his intermediary to Wikileaks regarding the coming Podesta email dump.

The House Dems did indeed provide the transcripts to Mueller and Stone has now been indicted for perjury. 

Others who look to have committed perjury: Don Jr, Jared Kushner, Erik Prince,  and Steve Bannon. Why Jr wasn’t indicted is a good question for Mueller-were the DOJ guidelines that say a ‘President’ can’t be indicted extended to the ‘President’s son and son-in-law?

As for Prince and Bannon both of them destroyed emails regarding the meeting in Seychelles back in January, 2017.

These are things the Dems are going to want to talk to Mueller about when he testifies-at present there are complications-as Mueller apparently worries about ‘looking political’ by simply telling the truth about this faux ‘President’ in public.

Amazing how different things were when it was a Democrat-Hillary Clinton-being investigated.

Unfortunately it’s hard not to be cynical about it. Yes, Mueller is very different stylistically than Comey to put it mildly. Still you can’t help but wonder if Mueller would be singing this song if it were President Hillary Clinton?

Mueller may fret that simply telling the truth about Trump in public will make him look ‘political’-that he’s ‘taking sides with the Democrats-Comey never worried about taking side with the Republicans-but by refusing to testify in public Mueller is effectively taking sides with ‘the President’ protecting him from political embarrassment-despite all the attacks Trump has lobbed against him how much he slandered him.

As for Mueller and how much he’d be willing to reveal in public this is an interesting piece by Darren Samuelsohn who watched 50 hours of Mueller’s testimony that suggests when it suits him Mueller could reveal a lot, he doesn’t always pull his punches-but perhaps as the ‘President’ in question is a Republican it doesn’t suit him.

As it is, Mueller was very conservative in his prosecutorial decisions-it’s certainly arguable that he was conservative and cautious to the extreme and you can’t ignore that he’s a lifelong Republican-as all the main actors at the FBI are-McCabe, Comey, Mueller.

That the GOP’s claims of a Deep State conspiracy against Trump aren’t simply laughed at and handwaved away also shows you were the real bias in the MSM to boot.

As for Bannon and Prince why were they charged with nothing-even destroying evidence? I mean if anything is an admission of guilt it would be destroying evidence-remember the freakout about Clinton ‘wiping her server clean’-the fact that this was what the rules actually called for was treated as a mere technicality?

And why wasn’t Jeff Sessions-who we recently learned lied and instructed his staff to lie again about when he learned he was under investigation for perjury.

Indeed, in light of the fact that McCabe had opened the perjury investigation into Sessions, Sessions firing McCabe for alleged ‘lack of candor’ looks like-among other things like protecting ‘President Trump’-a clear case of payback.

Here is a list the Dems sent to Mueller of potential perjurers back in February, 2019.

UPDATE 2.0: It seems the House Dems have finally convinced Barr and Friends that they’re serious.

Clearly Bill Barr didn’t want another contempt vote from House Intel to match his contempt citation with House Judiciary. The Dems have clearly been getting tougher and more resolved-with the I word-impeachment-being used by more members-even Nadler made a case for it in a conversation with Pelosi the other night.

 

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