Sam Nunberg has sold out Donald Trump and Roger Stone after all
Earlier this week, former longtime Trump adviser Sam Nunberg spent an entire day making unhinged cable television appearances and asserting that he would allow himself to be arrested rather than comply with the grand jury subpoena he had just received from Robert Mueller. Now it turns out he’s either changed his mind or that was all for show, because Nunberg did in fact show up and testify for the grand jury today – and it went for several hours.
Nunberg told CNN and MSNBC that he would rather get arrested than sell out his friend and mentor Roger Stone for his communications during the election with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In so doing, he gave away that Mueller does indeed have a grand jury against Stone and Assange. He also unwittingly seemed to give away that he had email communications with Stone which revealed Stone’s guilt. Today he showed up and testified for that grand jury, and based on how it’s playing out today, it’s a safe bet that he’s spilling his guts.
Sam Nunberg isn’t known to have actually participated in the Trump-Russia scandal, which would mean he hasn’t broken any laws, which would mean that he can’t invoke the Fifth Amendment. There is no Fifth Amendment right to refuse to testify about crimes you’ve witnessed other people committing or confessing to. So if Nunberg were refusing to answer questions today about what he heard or witnessed, his testimony would have been brief, and he would have left in handcuffs for contempt of court. Instead, CNN says he testified for six to six and a half hours, and it certainly didn’t end with handcuffs. So where does this leave us?
Robert Mueller’s subpoena demanded that Sam Nunberg give up all of his communications with ten Trump-Russia figures including Donald Trump, but it’s not clear that Nunberg necessarily has anything on Donald Trump. Instead, it very much appears that Nunberg has the goods on Roger Stone. Trump and Stone are widely believed to have talked regularly during the Trump-Russia scandal. If Mueller can use Nunberg to get to Stone, then Stone can (and probably will) give up Trump in order to save himself.
