Roger Stone’s arrest is officially on deck
Over the past few weeks it’s become increasingly clear that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is targeting Donald Trump’s longtime pal Roger Stone for indictment and arrest, and that he was fairly close to making it happen. This was based on various publicly available grand jury proceedings which spelled out where things were headed. Today things took a major step forward, and it’s fair to say that Stone’s arrest is officially on deck.
Mueller has already hauled in several of Roger Stone’s associates to testify against him, including Sam Nunberg. Mueller also recently subpoenaed two of Stone’s underlings, his social media guy and his driver. These processes always end with the people closest to the target, so these two are probably the last, or nearly the last, witnesses against Stone. As we stated at the time, the grand jury wasn’t going to indict Stone until after those two individuals testified, and it wasn’t clear when they would do so. But now that’s changed.
Roger Stone’s social media guy Jason Sullivan testified before the grand jury today, and briefly spoke with reporters outside the courthouse afterward, not saying much. So now we know that one of the two shoes has dropped. Once Stone’s driver testifies, that’ll just about clear the deck. Maybe Mueller has yet another witness up his sleeve who is even closer to Stone, but no such names have surfaced, even as the names of more than half a dozen other subpoenaed witnesses against Stone have all surfaced without much secrecy involved.
So what happens once the final witness against Roger Stone testifies? It’ll be time for Robert Mueller to make his closing argument, and for the grand jury to vote on whether to indict. Federal grand juries end up indicting far greater than 99% of the time, so this is essentially a given. Mueller will then have the green light to arrest Stone, and at that point Stone will have to decide whether to cut a plea deal against Donald Trump, or try to beat the rap at trial.
