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UPDATE: Regarding Stone’s becoming a large focus of Mueller and his own admission he may be indicted, we now learn that Mueller has subpoenaed another Stone aide who-what else for an aide to Roger Stone?-responded to the subpoena by somehow trying to get Mueller ousted.
Remember when Roger Stone said this?
“Last year, in a videotaped interview with The Post, Stone denied having any contacts with Russians during the campaign.”
“I’ve never been to Russia. I didn’t talk to anybody who was identifiably Russian during the two-year run-up to this campaign,” he said. “I very definitely can’t think of anybody who might have been a Russian without my knowledge. It’s a canard.”
I guess some ‘canards’ can be accurate while still being canards. Perhaps that’s why Stone-along with fellow Trumpkin Michael Caputo-‘forgot’ to tell the truth about conversations with Russians to the Intelligence Committee. He figured if the truth is a ‘canard’ you can lie without it being perjury. Now he-and Caputo-is now volunteering that he did in fact speak to someone ‘identifiably Russian during the campaign.
Roger Stone, longtime Trump confidant, reveals he met with a Russian who offered dirt on Hillary Clinton during 2016 campaign https://t.co/1pw8zh2FsW
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 17, 2018
“Stone and Caputo said in separate interviews that they also did not disclose the Greenberg meeting during testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence because they had forgotten about an incident that Stone calls unimportant “due diligence” that would have been “political malpractice” not to explore.”
I mean for 20 months he’d been claiming not to have spoken to the Russians and his new explanation is it would have been ‘political malpractice’ not to speak to the Russians but that, not to worry, he didn’t gain anything useful from it just like his buddy Manafort along with Don Jr and Jared Kushner gained nothing useful from speaking to that Kremlin lawyer back in June, 2016.
But why would it be ‘malpractice’ not to explore unless you’re hoping that the information gleamed would be useful, in other words you would collude if the offer was helpful-but in these cases allegedly it wasn’t. This shows the clear intent for ‘useful’ oppo against Clinton just like Don Jr, Stone’s buddy Manafort, etc in the June 2016 Trump Tower pow wow with the Russians
For those keeping score, the magic number rises to 11:
“Stone and Caputo’s interactions with Greenberg mean that at least 11 Trump associates or campaign officials have acknowledged interactions with a Russian during the election season or presidential transition. Those interactions have become public in the year and a half since a Trump spokeswoman said that no one associated with the campaign had communications with Russians or other foreign entities.”
This part quoted ver batim in Chapter B
“One day in late May 2016, Roger Stone — the political dark sorcerer and longtime confidant of Donald Trump — slipped into his Jaguar and headed out to meet a man with a “Make America Great Again” hat and a viscous Russian accent.”
“The man, who called himself Henry Greenberg, offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton, Trump’s presumptive Democratic opponent in the upcoming presidential election, according to Stone, who spoke about the previously unreported incident in interviews with The Washington Post. Greenberg, who did not reveal the information he claimed to possess, wanted Trump to pay $2 million for the political dirt, Stone said.”
“You don’t understand Donald Trump,” Stone recalled saying before rejecting the offer at a restaurant in the Russian-expat magnet of Sunny Isles, Fla. “He doesn’t pay for anything.”
“Later, Stone got a text message from Michael Caputo, a Trump campaign communications official who’d arranged the meeting after Greenberg had approached Caputo’s Russian-immigrant business partner.”
“How crazy is the Russian?” Caputo wrote, according to a text message reviewed by The Post. Noting that Greenberg wanted “big” money, Stone replied, “waste of time.”
So in other words Trump would have colluded if money weren’t involved? Of course, this focus on the money is itself yet another ‘canard’ to use Stone’s word. Seth Abramson:
“No one has ever alleged Trump offered money to anyone for Russian assistance, so that part of the story is immaterial. In *every* instance the allegation is that Trump was offering favorable Russia policy to the Kremlin, i.e. unilateral sanctions relief benefiting only Russia.”
The big Quid in the Quid pro Quo was sanctions relief and more generally more favorable US policy for Russia. You think getting out of the Paris Accord, gutting the State Department, slow walking sanctions imposed by Congress, demanding that the G7 bring back Russia and then later refusing to sign a G7 agreement providing for the common defense, agreeing to meet with Putin on July 16 and declaring you believe Putin didn’t interfere in our election going into the meeting is favorable enough policy for Putin?
What’s interesting is why is Stone-and Caputo-publicly volunteering this information now? Does he know Mueller now has evidence of his meeting with Greenberg? Let me go out on a limb right here and suggest that we will learn more and more about this meeting with this Russian as time goes on and it will keep on proving to be even worse than you think-this is always the case with TrumpWorld.
Clearly Stone does realize he’s in some trouble. In early May there were reports that Mueller had sent subpoenas to a consultant of Stone’s super PAC.
Mueller sends subpoenas to consultant for Roger Stone super PAChttps://t.co/Loz6c96cm3 pic.twitter.com/1P4NTE2xtB
— POLITICO (@politico) May 17, 2018
More generally we learned that Stone was becoming a major focus of the investigation.
Now Stone himself is saying ‘it’s possible I’ll be indicted.’
As so much that Roger Stone says, what he says here is totally paradoxical and doesn’t add up if taken at face value.
“The longtime Republican strategist Roger Stone said this week that “it is a possibility” he could be indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in the Russia investigation.”
Mueller is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election and whether members of President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Moscow to tilt the race in his favor.
“I acknowledge it is a possibility,” Stone, referring to an indictment, told Hill.TV’s “Rising.”
He added, however, that he is not “concerned” because that would suggest guilt.
But if he’s not guilty why would he be indicted? He offers another conspiracy theory:
He later said in a statement to Business Insider, “Just because one is innocent does not mean one cannot be framed.”
Oh, he’s going to be framed. I’m sure that’s just as credible as the time he claimed that the FBI tried not only to poison him but also run him off the road on the freeway.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/19/17479060/roger-stone-russian-meeting-mueller
https://www.vox.com/2018/5/25/17380212/spygate-trump-russia-spy-stefan-halper-fbi-explained