So much for Roger Stone
The problem for certain witnesses subpoenaed by the January 6th Committee is that if they don’t cooperate they’ll go to prison for contempt, and if they do cooperate they’ll be making it easier for prosecutors to indict and convict them for underlying January 6th crimes. There’s no good way out of this, and some of them are resorting to desperate parlor tricks in the meantime.
For instance, Roger Stone is planning to show up for his January 6th Committee testimony but plead the fifth, according to ABC News and NBC News. That’s fun, but it’s not some magic wand. If Stone surgically pleads the fifth in response to just certain specific questions, he’ll be painting a roadmap telling prosecutors what to indict him on. And if Stone broadly pleads the fifth to everything, even questions that couldn’t reasonably incriminate him, the committee will still refer him for criminal contempt.
In other words, Roger Stone loses either way. Moreover, he knows this. He’s already seen the committee announce that it’s referring John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark for criminal contempt, even after they tried to wave the Fifth Amendment magic wand. Stone knows he has no way out of this. Pleading the fifth may be the least bad option for him, but all it’s doing is setting him up for prison – and this time there’s no one to magically pardon him.
