Is Roger Stone going for an insanity defense?
Donald Trump’s former campaign adviser Roger Stone is either in the midst of a full-scale freakout as Special Counsel Robert Mueller moves in on him, or Stone is trying to pull off some kind of a mental incompetence defense – we’re just not sure which. Stone’s behavior in public has become increasingly reckless and erratic over the past week, suggesting that he’s losing it. Unless, of course, that’s his plan.
Robert Mueller has at least three, and maybe as many as four, cooperating witnesses against Roger Stone. The first and most visible is his former friend Sam Nunberg, who went on cable news and insisted he wouldn’t testify against Stone, before promptly testifying against Stone. Mueller also detained Stone associate Ted Malloch at an airport a week ago. Mueller also reportedly has a third witness against Stone. Mueller may also have the cooperation of Randy Credico, who may be the unnamed third witness, or may be a fourth witness.
If that sounds overly complex, suffice it to say that Mueller has lined up multiple people, who are testifying that Roger Stone told them that he met with Julian Assange. Recently, Stone asserted on social media that Nunberg is a “coke head” and a “psycho” and a “lying asshole.” Now Stone is making cable news appearances that seem unhinged at best. He appeared on CNN yesterday and announced that someone had poisoned him with polonium. That’s rather odd, considering that there’s no way to survive polonium poisoning, and if it were true, Stone would be dead by now.
So what is Roger Stone doing? Has he really cracked under the pressure to the point that he’s publicly cursing out the witnesses against him, and convinced himself that he’s somehow been poisoned? Is it possible that this is all a carefully orchestrated act, so he can come off as incompetent to stand trial? We’ll have to let Robert Mueller sort it out. But Stone’s behavior is getting weird, even by his standards.
