It sucks to be Roger Stone this week
So let’s see. You’re Roger Stone. You’ve spent the past few weeks watching Special Counsel Robert Mueller amass one cooperating witness against you after another in the Trump-Russia scandal, including some people you thought you were going to have your back. You’ve seen Mueller detain your associates in airports just to pin them down and make them testify against you. Then, just as everyone expected Mueller to bust down your door, instead he busted down the door of Michael Cohen. Is this supposed to be good news for you?
Absolutely. Here’s what we’ve learned about Robert Mueller. Whenever there’s a head fake, either because Mueller is purposely trying to catch people off guard, or simply because certain things leaked out to the media and other pieces didn’t, the non-target always ends up being the target soon thereafter. In other words, if anything, Roger Stone has even more reason to be on edge right now.
The Friday before Mueller arrested Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, various pieces that surfaced in public that day made it appear that Mueller was about to arrest Michael Flynn instead. We still don’t know if Mueller put those pieces out there to scare Flynn into thinking he was about to be arrested so he’d cut a plea deal, or if it was merely coincidental. But we do know that Mueller did zero in on Flynn very shortly thereafter, and within a few weeks, Flynn was so broken that he cut a plea deal.
So now that we’ve had the Roger Stone head fake even as Robert Mueller moved in on Michael Cohen instead, precedent says that Stone really is in Mueller’s close crosshairs. And if you think Mueller isn’t going to be thorough or gutsy enough to bust down the door of Donald Trump’s lifelong friend Roger Stone, consider that he just busted down the door of Michael Cohen, who is like a son to Trump. It sucks to be Roger Stone this week, because he’s already past his Trump-Russia expiration date.
