Days after his arrest, Roger Stone is already circling the drain
It’s barely been three days since Special Counsel Robert Mueller had Roger Stone indicted and arrested on seven felony counts. Stone is now out on bail and he’s running his mouth as ludicrously as ever. But behind the scenes, things are falling apart for Stone by the hour.
It’s not clear if Roger Stone’s attorneys were caught off guard by the out-of-nowhere arrest on Friday morning and the resulting speed of the subsequent developments, or if they’re just that incompetent, but either way they’ve already begun making a mess of this. According to NBC News, when Mueller decided to hold Stone’s arraignment and trial in Washington DC, Stone’s non-DC-based lawyers didn’t think to file a request to practice law there on Monday. The judge helpfully reminded them to be sure to take care of the paperwork, which they then promptly filed incorrectly, causing the judge to reject it. But this is only one of Stone’s mounting problems.
Even as Roger Stone prepares to head into court for his arraignment on Tuesday with or without a legal team, Robert Mueller is making clear that he still plans to add a whole lot more felony charges onto Stone’s indictment. So even if Stone mistakenly thinks he can beat the rap on all seven of the current charges, we’ve only seen the first wave of what Stone will be facing when he eventually gets to trial.
At this point there is ever reason to believe that the sixty-six year old Roger Stone will die of old age in a prison cell. He’s out on bail for now, but that’ll only last until he inevitably gets caught doing something underhanded to try to sabotage things, as is his nature. Stone should ask his old fried Paul Manafort how that worked out for him. But Stone probably can’t reach Manafort right now, because Manafort is rotting away behind bars and will never get out.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report