Home » The capture of Roger Stone, Public Enemy #2

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The capture of Roger Stone, Public Enemy #2 — 41 Comments

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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”

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. From “The FBI’s ridiculous riot gear and pre-dawn raid on Roger Stone was excessive and unnecessary” in the Washington Examiner:

    But was it really necessary to raid his house in riot gear? Did they expect him to resist arrest, guns blazing? Did they think he might try to create a diversion while trying to escape on a souped-up motorcycle? Or would you believe they thought he’d unleash two pit bulls and a dyspeptic chihuahua?

    Aside from threats of violence or escape, the usual excuse for riot-gear raids is to keep the suspect from destroying evidence while the agents wait at the door. The idea that this scenario applied here is risible. Stone has known for a full year that he was in investigators’ crosshairs. He has predicted for at least five months that he would be indicted for something or other. If he had evidence to destroy, he surely would have done so long, long ago, rather than suddenly deciding to try such destruction in the few moments between when an FBI agent rings the doorbell and when he decides to answer it.

  9. 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.

  10. 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

  11. 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.

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

  14. 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:

    Even when no immediate death or injury occurs from these over-testosteroned shows of force, the victims, some of them entirely innocent, can feel terrorized or violated, and rightly so.

    In the specific case of FBI raids, the use or threat of force always will enjoy at least something of a judgment call. But the raids on Stone and Manafort certainly seem to run afoul of the intent of the FBI Investigations and Operations Guide, section 4.1.1 E, which requires that agents “employ the least intrusive means that do not otherwise compromise FBI operations.” This requirement is often repeated in other subsections of the guide.

    America is not a police state, and its law enforcement agencies should make every effort to avoid looking like one.

    It is hard to conceive a single reason why the FBI could not have merely called Stone’s lawyer, asked Stone to turn himself in, and avoided all the drama and potential danger. The man may be guilty as sin, but he was as much a threat to arresting officers as a canary is to a clowder of hungry cats.

    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?

  15. AesopFan,’
    The FBI Director knows which side of his bread substitute has the ersatz margarine on it, and it ain’t Trump’s side.

  16. 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/

    Nailing Roger Stone on false statements was hardly a challenge. Stone could not give an interview without contradicting himself on national television. The question is, without Stone, what is left of the hack-and-attack conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign? Like the Trump Tower meeting, the Stone angle seems to have fizzled out. On closer examination, there clearly appears to be dirty politics but nothing that can be fairly described as a criminal conspiracy.

    Mueller has been unrelenting in pursuing Stone. Now he has him. For whatever it is worth.

  17. 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

    January 26, 2019
    Massive number of hacked Russian documents posted online
    By Rick Moran
    A group that says it advocates for “transparency” has released hundreds of thousands of documents hacked from Russian sources. The organization, DDoSecret, says that the trove includes “hundreds of thousands of messages and files from Russian politicians, journalists, oligarchs, religious figures, and nationalists/terrorists in Ukraine.”

    The Times reports that the trove is so massive that what the documents contain is so far unknown. There is apparently little in the way of a search function that would identify documents by specific subject matter. So journalists are going to have to go through the documents and discover their contents over time.

    There are probably some startling revelations. While murder and cybercrimes committed by the Russian goverment almost certainly were never discussed in emails, there may be some evidence of Russian troops being deployed to Eastern Ukraine – despite Putin’s continuing denials. Documents relating to the downing of the Ukrainian commercial airliner would also be of huge interest.

    Hopefully, this will keep them too busy to make twits of themselves again for awhile.

  18. Every single decision Mueller has made seems to have one goal: to get Trump’s aides and former aides to implicate him,

    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.

  19. 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.

  20. 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.

  21. 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.

  22. 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.

  23. 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.

  24. 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?

  25. 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.

  26. 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.

  27. 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.

  28. 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.

  29. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

  30. 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

  31. 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

  32. 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.

  33. 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/

  34. 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.

  35. 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/

  36. PowerLine quoting Tucker Carlson
    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/mysteries-of-the-mueller-probe-contd.php

    But this show persisted, because that’s our job. We asked both CNN’s official spokesman and the kid you just saw playing media reporter a very simple question: Did Mueller’s office help you with your story. The response, of course, was feigned outrage. How dare you! You’re right wing! Be quiet!

    But when we kept pressing them, an interesting thing happened: They didn’t deny it. Here’s the specific question we asked: “Did federal law enforcement officials confirm the raid on Roger Stone’s house to CNN before it happened?”

    Very simple question. And when we pressed it, CNN dropped the fake outrage….

    “…they just refused to answer.” (finished the transcription)

    A PL commenter picks up an interesting point:

    reaalistx • 8 hours ago
    Of course CNN was tipped off.

    Even if CNN suspected that Stone was about to be arrested, why on earth would CNN expect a predawn raid on his house?

    Stone is elderly, has no history of violence, and has always shown up for court proceedings – the normal procedure would have been to call his lawyer, and instruct him to deliver Stone to a specified location at a specified time for arrest.

    The fact that CNN had cameras there before dawn, and the fact that the FBI allowed their SWAT team to be backlit for the cameras by CNN (which would have been suicidal had the FBI actually encountered armed resistance), indicates that obviously the FBI was working with CNN to make the arrest as theatrical as possible.

    A number of people familiar with police tactics noted on Twitter after the raid that allowing backlighting of the SWAT team was a complete violation of the most elementary safety rules.

    Samuel Adams reaalistx • 7 hours ago
    That and the simple fact they allowed the camera crew to be anywhere near them if the team was raiding a “dangerous” fugitive.

    HEWCPA • 9 hours ago
    It’s not a secret that Josh Campbell (the “intuitive” CNN reporter) is not only former FBI but worked directly with James Comey. It takes the least inference (or conjecture) to understand Campbell is part of the cabal. This is all publicly on Campbell’s Wikipedia bio

    MostlyRight HEWCPA • 8 hours ago
    In a weird way, it’s actually frightening how poorly the FBI conducts their little special operations. Not very professional to have such blatant linkages. It’s frightening because it shows they are either incompetent or simply don’t care, as they know the propaganda is now so strong they can get away with it.

    JJ_Chester HEWCPA • 9 hours ago
    This is my facorite part: “On February 2, 2018, Campbell published an op-ed in The New York Times entitled “Why I Am Leaving the FBI”, which outlined his criticism of current attacks on the FBI by the Donald Trump administration and Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. He has remained a vocal critic of efforts to undermine the Robert Mueller Special Counsel investigation and has vocally defended the FBI from political attacks.”

    JJ_Chester • 9 hours ago
    The feds used about 10 times the personnel to arrest Stone as they did the Unabomber.

    What is concerning is that the deployment of such forces has a very high risk factor. Suppose that as Stone was openning the door pursuant to the FBI “knock”, he had brushed a vase off of the credenza in the foyer and it exploded with a loud bang as it hit the marble floor. An agent, in a highly charged atmosphere at just after 6:00 am, with his finger too close to the trigger might have fired off a round in response to the noise and his comrades might well have followed with a few rounds of their own. Wa sit really worth the risk?

    Thank God Stone’s two Yorkies were not trained to attack.

    JJS_FLA • 8 hours ago
    Reminder: Valerie Jarrett’s daughter covers the Justice Dept. for CNN.

    In which direction are the instructions given?

    Does anyone else know anything about this person’s connections?

    AnotherBrian • 4 hours ago
    It was more suspicious because the FBI blocked the streets for the raid, but the CNN crew was allowed to pass. As a general rule, if the police block the streets for a raid, they also toss any who doesn’t have business there outside the barricade, including news agencies.

    And that’s the way it is.

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