On Monday evening, it became obvious that Roger Stone had delivered another shot to his own foot, with a plea for cash that managed to both violate a gag order and threaten a federal judge. His attorneys then tried to make it all better by producing a ridiculous “notice of apology.” Which is not a thing. Despite the way that Stone’s team dressed this bit of text up with a case number and the trappings of an official court document, there is no such thing as a “notice of apology.” Stone cannot trample court orders, sprinkle his cash-begging emails with crosshairs, and then make it all better with an official “whoopsie.”
By Tuesday, Judge Amy Berman Jackson made it clear that not only is Stone’s notice unacceptable, but his actions are absolutely in violation of her earlier orders. So much so that Stone has been ordered to appear in court on Thursday and provide a reason, any reason, why he shouldn’t get to coordinate his Mafioso pinstripe suits with some genuine prison bars. And he’s going to have to do better than an official “Notice of Gee, I didn’t mean to imply people should shoot a federal judge.” And while Stone is trying to think up a lie, and think it up quick, USA Today wants to remind everyone that the information about Roger Stone that appeared in recent court documents is a genuinely big deal.
In explaining why the case of Stone lying to investigators meets the standard of being “related” to the investigation into the Trump campaign’s connection with the Russian government, it’s worth noting that “related” has a specific meeting in court documents.
Under local court rules, cases should be designated as “related” if they arise “from a common wiretap, search warrant, or activities which are a part of the same alleged criminal event or transaction.”
That’s how Stone wound up reporting to Judge Berman, who has dealt with other prosecutions emerging from Mueller’s office. But what makes Stone’s case extraordinary is just which search warrants turned up the evidence against him. That evidence wasn’t found by rifling through Stone’s email, or looking under his Florida porch. It came from search warrants executed against Russian agents.
“The government obtained and executed dozens of search warrants on various accounts used to facilitate the transfer of stolen documents for release, as well as to discuss the timing and promotion of their release. Several of those search warrants were executed on accounts that contained Stone’s communications with Guccifer 2.0 and with Organization 1.”
Guccifer 2.0 would be Russian government intelligence operatives. Oranization 1 is WikiLeaks. So what the special counsel’s office is saying here is that it found evidence of Stone’s lying not in information he provided, not in emails he turned over, but in emails it obtained by searching accounts belonging to WikiLeaks and Russian operatives.
These documents would seem to cement a direct connection between Donald Trump’s longtime friend and campaign adviser, agents of the Russian government, and the organization that Russia used to disseminate stolen goods. It doesn’t spell out, but it certainly implies, a direct level of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.
There’s another word in the court documents that’s also loaded with more value that it may normally be credited with. It’s the word “evidence.” By referring to the information found in Russian accounts as evidence, the special counsel’s office is indicating not just that Stone talked with the Russians, but that what he said to them was incriminating.
Finally, the fact that Robert Mueller continues to place such an emphasis on WikiLeaks and how Stone and others communicated with it isn’t because the special counsel has it in for Julian Assange. It’s because the Russia investigation seems to have defined the conspiracy between the Trump campaign as having at least three parts:
- Seeking and obtaining information that could be used against Hillary Clinton by stealing it from the DNC and Democratic consultants.
- Planning how this information could be used to help Trump, and what Russia might get in exchange.
- Coordinating the dissemination of this information, including timing and contents, to generate maximum impact and distract from issues with Trump.
Just one of these things might be enough to warrant charges of conspiracy against the United States. All three of them together almost certainly meet that standard. And that is, of course, just one part of the picture. It doesn’t include what Russia was doing for Trump through social media, or how Trump’s digital campaign and Paul Manafort were assisting in that effort by sharing data and providing analysis. And it doesn’t include the maneuvering of Michael Cohen and the reward awaiting Trump in the form of the Moscow Project.
On Thursday, there’s a good chance that Judge Jackson will pack Stone off to jail for his continued threats and violations of the law. But it’s very unlikely that contempt of court is the last new charge that Stone is going to see. Mueller hasn’t finished the paperwork on Stone. But it seems very likely that within the next two weeks, both Stone and additional members of the Trump campaign are going to get a much better view of what the special counsel’s office found when it looked at the other end of those emails between the Trump campaign and Russia.