Robert Mueller obtains key new cooperating witness for taking down Roger Stone and Donald Trump
Last week Sam Nunberg went on cable news and informed us all that he had no intention of testifying against his friend Roger Stone, and that he was willing to go to prison in defiance of Robert Mueller’s grand jury subpoena. Then on Friday we learned that Nunberg testified anyway. The question, of course, was whether Nunberg’s seemingly unstable nature might make his testimony unreliable. Now that doesn’t matter anymore, because Mueller has found another key cooperating witness against Stone and Trump.
Mueller now has two cooperating witnesses who are close associates of Roger Stone. Both these witnesses have testified that Stone told them about his direct communications with WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange during the election. This means Mueller doesn’t have to prove that Stone’s contacts with Assange were a crime in order to nail him. Stone already testified under oath before Congress that he did not communicate directly with Assange, and Mueller can charge him for felony perjury. So if Nunberg is one of the two witnesses, who is the other?
That’s the tricky part. The Washington Post, which broke the story of the second witness, is keeping that person’s identity under wraps due to the nature of the investigation (link). Rick Gates is an associate of Stone and just cut a plea deal, so he fits the bill, but he wouldn’t be leaking things to the media right now. Stone’s pal Randy Credico also fits the bill, but the last report on Credico late last year was that he’d pleaded the fifth.
In any case, the identity of the second witness may not matter. The bottom line is that Robert Mueller now has two witnesses testifying that Roger Stone lied under oath. That’s enough to put Stone in prison for years. Unless Stone wants to take his chances at trial, he’ll now have to cut a plea deal against Donald Trump. Stone and Trump have been close friends for decades, so Stone likely knows where most of the bodies are buried.
