Roger Stone should be freed

Mark Penn:

Attorney General William Barr is right that presidential tweets on Department of Justice (DOJ) cases make his job difficult in today’s super-charged political environment. But President Trump is also right that the case of his associate, Roger Stone, is nothing but a political prosecution that, until the president tweeted about it, got little attention or examination.

For all the hullabaloo about Trump’s tweets, which are nothing more than an expression of opinion, remember that in five of the last six special or independent counsel investigations, such interventions were not at all unusual. Both Democratic and Republican presidents pardoned numerous figures caught in the penumbra of those probes, especially those prosecuted for process crimes. President George H.W. Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger even before his trial for allegedly lying to an independent counsel; President Bill Clinton pardoned most of the Whitewater figures who were his friends, and even President Barack Obama pardoned Gen. James Cartwright, his “favorite general,” after Cartwright pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Just untangling what the Stone case is about can be a mindbender. Stone publicly bragged about a direct line to WikiLeaks, then downplayed or omitted in congressional interviews his contacts with radio host and political activist Randy Credico after acknowledging he had been in touch with Jerome Corsi, a well-known conspiracy theorist. He did not turn over to Congress these communications or a text to the Trump campaign that “the package” was coming. No actual contacts with WikiLeaks were found, and there was nothing illegal about any of these communications, so concealing them had no point. Stone then wrote some over-the-top texts to Credico with allusions to “The Godfather” and threatened Credico’s dog. Critically, Credico testified that he did not take these texts seriously based on his relationship with Stone. So, the “victim” of this intimidation saw them as typical Stone hyperbole.

I wrote two articles about a year ago pointing out how misguided this case was and how unfair were the actions of the judge. Unlike the prosecutions of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, Stone was accused of no financial crime, failure to file as a lobbyist, or any other business or financial malfeasance. This was not for lack of trying: Prosecutors went through every aspect of Stone’s life and called witnesses galore, even bringing in the “Manhattan Madame” to testify. But they obviously found nothing of interest. Yet, at the end of their investigation, long after they knew there was no Trump-Russia collusion, special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors circled back to go after Stone as a parting gift of their $31 million investigation. Even though Stone’s infractions were of absolutely no consequence, they went after him with a vengeance.

Presumably, Stone’s “intimidating” texts then served as justification for arresting him with an armada of 26 armed officers, weapons drawn, and an amphibious unit out back in case he had a speedboat ready for a mad dash to Cuba or Venezuela. The raid, conveniently broadcast by CNN, telegraphed to the world that Stone was a danger to the republic of the highest order.

On top of this, Stone drew the same judge that threw Manafort into solitary confinement and denied him reasonable bail. Stone didn’t have a passport, so the judge was unable to repeat that here; instead, she issued a gag order, ostensibly to prevent him from tainting the jury pool — a pool that had been tainted by the very public raid that CNN was there to cover in all its armed glory.

New evidence of how tainted that pool was comes from the late-breaking fact that the jury foreman in Stone’s case had cheered on both the Mueller investigation and the very raid that arrested Stone. You see, in the eyes of this judge, there was no problem with that raid; the problem was in letting Stone defend himself in public and raise funds for his defense. The gag order remained in place, remarkably, even after the jury was picked and deliberated — when the First Amendment’s prior restraint had no purpose whatsoever but to shield the court from criticism and pressure Stone to cave rather than appeal.
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Stone is a good example of the two-tiered system of justice at the DOJ.  Hillary Clinton and her associates lied about her actual crimes and were given a walk, while Stone lied about something inconsequential and would be given nine years in the penitentiary. 

That is absurd on its face.  He was mistreated by the Mueller thugs and then by the judge.  He is basically a harmless gadfly who is no threat to anyone.  He is a perfect example of how misplaced the Mueller probe was.  It was a bad faith operation from the beginning. 

Mueller and his team knew all along there was no Russian collusion and they set out to exploit Trump associates with process crime traps and were trying to trip up the President with an obstruction of justice trap.