Another process arrest for Mueller
They’re coming for you next: The office of special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted and arrested Roger Stone, another Trump associate, accusing him of perjury and witness tampering.
Stone is not accused of doing anything in any way related to Russia or collusion. Instead, he is accused of lying to Congress about contacts he made, through a third party, to Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks. He is also accused of trying to get that third party to lie as well.
Perjury and witness tampering are certainly crimes, but they are merely more process crimes, the only kinds of crimes Mueller so far has found. Stone’s actions in trying to contact Assange were not illegal. His crime only exists because of the witch hunt that is being run by Mueller, designed to persecute anyone connected with Trump. It also has nothing to do with so-called Russian collusion by Trump and his campaign, the ludicrous accusation that was used to create Mueller’s investigation and is supposedly its focus. He has nothing, and so he has to create something.
I should also note that it appears Stone was arrested by FBI agents pounding on Stone’s door, with CNN camera’s conveniently there to record it. I wonder how much of this is theater created for the cameras. Had Mueller’s office told Stone he was about to be arrested, I would think he would have surrendered himself peaceably.
Or maybe not. Maybe it was Stone who decided to force the FBI to come to his house and cart him away. In today’s America the issues of right and wrong, crime and innocence, and justice no longer matter much. All that matters is politics, and how you can use power and the media to do the most harm to your political enemies.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
They’re coming for you next: The office of special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted and arrested Roger Stone, another Trump associate, accusing him of perjury and witness tampering.
Stone is not accused of doing anything in any way related to Russia or collusion. Instead, he is accused of lying to Congress about contacts he made, through a third party, to Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks. He is also accused of trying to get that third party to lie as well.
Perjury and witness tampering are certainly crimes, but they are merely more process crimes, the only kinds of crimes Mueller so far has found. Stone’s actions in trying to contact Assange were not illegal. His crime only exists because of the witch hunt that is being run by Mueller, designed to persecute anyone connected with Trump. It also has nothing to do with so-called Russian collusion by Trump and his campaign, the ludicrous accusation that was used to create Mueller’s investigation and is supposedly its focus. He has nothing, and so he has to create something.
I should also note that it appears Stone was arrested by FBI agents pounding on Stone’s door, with CNN camera’s conveniently there to record it. I wonder how much of this is theater created for the cameras. Had Mueller’s office told Stone he was about to be arrested, I would think he would have surrendered himself peaceably.
Or maybe not. Maybe it was Stone who decided to force the FBI to come to his house and cart him away. In today’s America the issues of right and wrong, crime and innocence, and justice no longer matter much. All that matters is politics, and how you can use power and the media to do the most harm to your political enemies.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Well said.
The FBI raid made me think that the US now has its own gestapo. We should all be afraid when a swat team raids someone’s house in the middle of the night. The FBI is a rogue agency that must be held accountable before a new President, who is sympathetic towards them, is sworn in.
The CNN reporter who was there with the camera crew was interviewed this morning and said that they staked out Mr. Stone’s house on a hunch based on their reporter at the DC courthouse noticing that the Special Counsel’s grand jury met yesterday (Thursday) when they usually only meet on Fridays. That, combined with Mr. Stone repeated predictions that he was about to be indicted was enough to go on.
I don’t know if the crew was hanging out in a van or what, and if the FBI even knew they were there at first, but shorty after things started happening they were forced to leave and the block was cordoned off, and that is why there is so little video. I think the FBI was putting on a show for an audience of one and they would have preferred not to have been filmed at all.
I heard it said that this is a not so unusual tactic intended to rattle the nerves of the subject in an effort to elicit cooperation. Seems distasteful, but law enforcement does a lot of things I disagree with.
This is the closest thing they have to some sort of collusion with outside actors. At least from the Trump campaign. There is a lot of stuff out in the open about Democrats working with foreign nationals and governments to influence the election. Hillary bragged about talking to foreign officials about policy and the election but this type of activity was used to justify spying on the Trump campaign.
It is really a shame that the Special Counsel was not charged with investigating Russian influence in the campaign, regardless of either party. I think the DNC stooges in the DOJ knew that this couldn’t be included in the scope of the investigation because of how bad it would look for Democrats, the media, and for the Obama administration. But then again, it would have been another whitewash investigation and would have been over in a week or two.
Kirk wrote: “I heard it said that this is a not so unusual tactic intended to rattle the nerves of the subject in an effort to elicit cooperation.”
This would mean that the FBI has been the U.S.’s gestapo for some time.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/gestapo
“notorious for its brutal methods and operations.”
Kirk–
The FBI knew CNN was waiting, cuz’ they leaked it all to CNN ahead of time.
If they did an actual leak-investigation on this, (and it is a Felony) they’d have to arrest themselves and the CNN producer.
(tangentially– if the FBI actually investigated CNN and looked at all their emails, they’d have to wrap the CNN building (and FBI office) in crime tape and render everyone therein, off shore, “all the way, off shore.”
I’m no big fan of Roger Stone, (Nixon was a progressive-republican, not a conservative, and Bush was well, Bush.) but that having been said– Stone didn’t commit any crimes, until he talked to the FBI, that’s why it’s a pure process-crime at best. (it’s a manufactured event, and reason #1 you never (and I mean never, ever) talk to the FBI without your lawyer and a tape-recorder running.)
–It would be nice if they treated lord god Hillary Clinton like the criminal we all know she IS. (but… not in this lifetime, eh?!)
V for Vendetta opening monolog
Kinetic Typography
https://youtu.be/Otv5ywOa-8U
1:20
Which is why this beloved country of ours is now on the brink of civil war — because justice no longer serves the law-abiding, and government no longer serves its citizens. That leaves the choice of succumbing to tyranny or fighting (literally) to defeat it. Somehow, I don’t think the 100-million Americans who are armed will relinquish their freedom easily.
Don’t lie to the FBI and they won’t knock on your door with a warrant for doing so.
It’s not a difficult concept.
The moral knots you so call conservatives twist yourselves into, in your defense of the ‘King of lies’ is disturbing.
Metallica –
“No Leaf Clover”
2006
https://youtu.be/Sh5S3OxiE-s
5:35
“Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel, is just the freight train coming your way.”
BSJ–
it’s not that simplistic. (The FBI needs to go, but that’s a topic for a different thread. Prohibition gave us the FBI, that’s all I need to know.)
These “interviews” consist of numerous FBI agent’s taking hand-written notes (they forbid tape recordings,)(( I was being facetious about getting the recorder running, ya’ just do not talk to these people.))
That’s what the lawyer is for. Everyone is presumed innocent of everything, unless and until convicted in a court. They can charge anything they want, it’s all words. In the meantime, they WILL grind him up in the wheels of the injustice-system. (They do this to people who sell ‘drugs,’ all the time, all the time.)
The FBI has all of Stone’s electronic communications. Any little discrepancy between his memory while being “interviewed,” can be charged as a Felony, –a process crime. And if I’m not mistaken, at least one inconsistency came about from testimony to a house committee, but the house didn’t care at all….)
He’s not a flight risk, he’s broke, he’s under surveillance, he’s a nobody in the grand scheme, but it took 29 federal Agent’s to arrest him and drag him to a detention center. And the icing on the cake was calling up CNN and having them film it all.
Bonnie and Clyde
1967 Final scene
https://youtu.be/NrmUpso_xT8?t=13
If one answers the same question many many times in many variations there is bound to be some to be some deviation in the answers. And that forms the basis of the so called lie.
The issue is not necessarily with the person answering the questions but in the motives of those doing the asking.
Michael–
Good stuff!
“How the FBI uses evil deceptive manipulative techniques to control you…”
Form 302 distortion and process-crimes- Title 18 USC section 3001 false statement statute
Harvey Silvergate
https://youtu.be/2jllcgd7SiQ
6:52
“Why the Constitution Had to Be Destroyed (and how they did it)”
Professor Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Mises Circle, January 2012
https://youtu.be/wDyDxgJuaDY
42:40
“Not a single Federal law was ruled un-constitutional by the Supreme Court, between 1937 and 1995.”
BSJ wrote: “Don’t lie to the FBI and they won’t knock on your door with a warrant for doing so.”
Gen. Michael Flynn may disagree; he lost his house to an accusation of lying despite the interviewing FBI officers said he was truthful (and had told Flynn that it was not an interview (read: interrogation)). Even though he is not guilty, he eventually plead guilty in order to stop the financial hemorrhaging.
This video explains why you should not talk to the police:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE (47 minutes, “Don’t talk to the police”)
If only Flynn had seen it a couple of years ago …
Edward-
Good stuff.
Personally, I like my local police force and have interacted with them a bit whilst doing mental-health work, but if you ever find yourself on the wrong side of the “interview” table, you need to keep your mouth shut and let the lawyer talk. We have an adversarial criminal justice system– “they” have to prove you’re guilty of something, you don’t have to prove you’re innocent.
The only person looking out for your best interest’s, is you, not the ‘authorities.’
Please note: Stone is accused of lying to Congress, not the FBI. Read the article please.
(I would maintain that is a distinction without a difference.)
24 pages of lies, our so called “government” at work–
United States of America V. Roger Jason Stone Jr.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/document-indictment-roger-stone
I would maintain that if one is going to discuss a subject, one should make sure one has got one’s facts right.
Stone did not lie during an FBI interview (the manner in which they are conducted have serious problems) He apparently lied during Congressional testimony, in direct contradiction to other evidence. You have been arguing about the FBI’s corruption in connection with interviews, but that is irrelevant here.
This remains a process crime that only occurred because of Mueller’s witch hunt. It does not however have anything to do with FBI interview techniques.
I have to say ( and sorry Bob, but this is still on the “other” subject being discussed here) that from a European perspective there does seem to be a deep rooted problem with the US policing system…
I was wrongly arrested on my last visit to the UK after trying to break up a fight at a party.. ( I should know better… I’m getting too old for that sort of thing!)
I spent an evening in the cells until the CCTV footage was reviewed, and was treated very well indeed… The officers were polite, I was given good medical assistance as I have type 1 diabetes, I had prompt access to legal advice, and even received an apology and handshake as I left the station the next morning.
This seems the polar opposite to the US police in much I read about in the news and on blogs and forums I visit with a US centric focus….
Is it really as bad as it is painted? Or is it just confirmation bias as no one speaks about the good work US cops do?
Robert,
We probably got off onto the topic of the FBI because of their brutish tactics, treating Stone as a drug-lord kingpin mobster gang-leader type of hardened, violent, armed-and-dangerous, hostage-taking, clear-and-present-danger, criminal. That and the obvious tipping off of a favored media source so that the public would become more fearful of our government, its methods, and its tyrannical rule over we poor, rabble, peons.
We now have a government not of laws, where we are treated equally and fairly under the law, but of people, where it matters who your friends in government are. Hillary Clinton gets off without so much as an arraignment, even after the FBI declares a large number of serious felonies, but friends of Trump are excessively persecuted (including pre-trial solitary confinement), even when they have been deemed as doing no wrong. They bring the full weight of government down on innocent people to the point where they are financially drained into false guilty pleas in order to stop the torture and ruin and to save the rest of their family from poverty. What kind of government does this to the innocent while publicly freeing multi-felons (several of Clinton’s staff also committed felonies and also were never charged, solely because they were cronies of high ranking FBI leaders).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aO9tA5DWJM (2 minutes)
This is essentially what you were saying with: “In today’s America the issues of right and wrong, crime and innocence, and justice no longer matter much. All that matters is politics, and how you can use power and the media to do the most harm to your political enemies.”
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, has perished from the earth.
Frankly, lying to a bunch of people who lie for a living seems like no big deal. It is a big deal, because they need accurate information in order to make good decisions, but even when their information is accurate they screw the pooch on virtually every occasion. So, once again, it seems like no big deal, as facts and the truth have no bearing on their poor decision making process. They just do what’s best for themselves and for their cronies.
Like Clinton and her staff.
Which government office do I go to to get back my government of the people, by the people, for the people?
Lee S,
It may be as bad as painted. We here in the U.S. do not hear about apologies from the police for wrongful arrests or from the courts for wrongly ruined lives or reputations. Raymond Donovan is famous for asking, after he and his codefendants were acquitted, “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?”
There was no answer.
Lee, you seem to be a victim of the adage: no good deed goes unpunished. At least you got an apology. And even a handshake; wow!
Edward: I don’t disagree about the FBI and its odious tactics. It undercuts the argument however if that argument is not based on fact.
See this article for a more detailed look at the indictment and Stone’s testimony. It appears, like other Mueller indictments, to be more smoke than mirrors.
(ok… my bad for conflating the fbi and the permanent select committee. I would however maintain, it makes no difference.
Lee S—
We don’t have a national police force in the USA, although the fbi imagines they are it.
This is how one deals with congress–
William Mandel testifies before HUAC
May 1960
https://youtu.be/UM8uP565hzI
1:23
Edward–
Good stuff.
Cronies Out to Lunch
Crony Chronicles 2012
https://youtu.be/OuYIyYMkYuc
1:39
Don’t lie.
Is that good enough Bob?
If Roger Stone is on the side you support, there is something wrong with your side.
Given that, with Stone, we are dredging up the debacle that was the Nixon administration. I’ll say that time in history was a teaching moment.
Why have so few people learned from it? Or was the lesson gleaned from that embarrassment lie, lie, lie until you can’t any more. And then lie some more, because like Trump, one only tells the truth ‘when they can’.
BSJ: Just like everyone else, you reserve all your criticism for only one side. Very partisan. I agree that Stone should fry if he committed perjury and witness tampering, but I also see the corruption and abuse of power by Mueller and the FBI.
The conservatives see only one. You (the liberal side) see only the other. I see an overall cesspool that is destroying the principles that founded the country.
Life Liberty and Levin
Guest: Sidney Powell, author “Licensed to Lie”
1-27-19
cued to the relevant current situation
https://youtu.be/M8WmcFCw5mQ?t=1392
(40:33)
>A deep dive into Mueller and Weissmann.