Roger Stone is finished
Over the past several months, we’ve watched Special Counsel Robert Mueller painstakingly building a multifaceted criminal case against Donald Trump’s oldest friend Roger Stone. Mueller has hauled in so many of Stone’s associates to testify against him, you’d need a flow chart to keep up with them all – and this past week he appeared to be near the end. Now the Paul Manafort plea deal has suddenly changed everything about the Stone case, because as it turns out, Stone and Manafort have a professional relationship going back decades.
Paul Manafort’s plea deal formally requires him to cooperate with any and all government investigations. That’s a wee bit of a problem for Roger Stone. Why? Well, for instance, the two of them had a lobbying firm together in the 1980s called Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly which catered to foreign leaders. If they didn’t break any laws together, then Stone doesn’t have anything to worry about. But considering that the Manafort investigation has revealed that he’s been committing felonies involving foreign governments and financial fraud for decades, that’s a bit of a dicey proposition.
The key here is that Manafort has already done his proffer sessions with Robert Mueller’s team, meaning he’s already given up everything he knows. That certainly includes everything that Manafort knows about Roger Stone. So now Mueller finally has the one thing that he’s seemingly lacked in his case against Stone: someone who has spent time deep inside Stone’s political operation, and who is eager to cooperate as thoroughly as possible.
Roger Stone’s prospects just went from near-zero to zero. He was going to be indicted and arrested soon anyway. Now, if Stone decides to fight the charges at trial, prosecutors will be armed with everything that Paul Manafort just gave them about Stone. Today’s events made clear that no magic pardons are coming for any Donald Trump associates – and Manafort just snatched what might be the last semi-lenient plea deal left on the table. If Stone were smart, he’d flip tomorrow. Instead he’ll probably just call us “fake news” again.
