No George Washington

Looks like Roger Stone, purveyor of political dirty tricks and self-styled master of “posture, bluff, hype,” may have out-clevered himself into a stay in the big house with other Trump associates Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort.

Friday morning, FBI agents staged a pre-dawn raid on Stone’s house and arrested him on a seven-count indictment from Special Counsel Mueller for lying to Congress, obstruction, and witness tampering. There must be some interesting stuff on Stone’s iPhone and hard drive for the FBI to send a dozen agents for the raid.

Roger Stone is a Republican operative dating back to the Watergate era (he has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back). Stone and Paul Manafort were partners in a political consulting firm in the 1980s that specialized in Republican causes and burnishing the reputations of would-be and actual foreign dictators. He has been a long-time advisor to Trump, served on the Trump presidential campaign until late 2015 and was a staunch supporter through the election.

Yes, a long-time advisor to Donald Trump indicted. Another probable dot connected in Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

All of Stone’s indictment felonies are related to the WikiLeaks release of damaging information on Hillary Clinton from emails hacked by the Russians from the Democratic National Committee during the campaign. The indictment says Stone lied to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence about emails and texts he had to and from an “intermediary”—who has identified himself as Jerome Corsi, a right-wing political commentator and conspiracy theorist—and another ‘go-between,” a long-time colleague of Stone’s, former radio personality, Randy Credico. Corsi and Credico acted as liaisons between Stone and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Stone’s efforts to learn more on behalf of the Trump campaign about the nature and timing of the DNC emails that WikiLeaks would release.

Last fall I wrote a blog, “Trump Surrounded,” on the day after Michael Cohen pleaded guilty and Paul Manafort was convicted, each of multiple felonies. Cohen’s guilty plea implicated Trump as the one who directed him to make hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.

At the time I said stay tuned, because where there’s smoke there’s fire.

Since then, Cohen pleaded guilty to an additional charge by Mueller for lying to Congress about the timing of when Trump’s Moscow hotel project ended. BuzzFeed recently released a story asserting that Cohen says Trump advised him to lie to Congress about it. More recently, Cohen postponed voluntary testimony to Congress because he felt Trump was threatening reprisals against his family, and has now been subpoenaed by Congress to testify. And Manafort agreed to cooperate with Mueller, did—sort of—and then had the rug yanked out from underneath him for lying during his cooperation. He now potentially faces decades in prison.

So as I said last fall, stay tuned. Trump appears not only surrounded, but with Mueller methodically closing in.

Stone’s indictment, which you can find in this New York Times article, states that after the release of the first tranche of hacked DNC emails, “a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information” WikiLeaks had on the Clinton campaign (emphasis mine).

Who do you think might have directed that “senior Trump Campaign official”?

After Stone lied to Congress about all this, he engaged in an angry exchange with Credico when Credico insisted he wouldn’t perjure himself to corroborate Stone’s lies in subpoenaed testimony to Congress:

In one text Stone sent to Credico: “‘Stonewall it. Plead the fifth. Anything to save the plan’ . . . Richard Nixon.” (Emphasis mine. This reference, by the way, quotes Nixon in the infamous Watergate tapes.)

In other communications, Stone told Credico to do a “Frank Pentangeli.” In the Godfather: Part II, Pentangeli is a character who stonewalls a congressional committee after threats to his family, testifying he has no damning information on the Corleone family’s Mafia activities.

In another text Stone sent to Credico: “If you testify you’re a fool. Because of tromp [sic] I could never get away with a certain [sic] my Fifth Amendment rights but you can.” (Credico subsequently told Congress he would plead the Fifth and was released from testimony as a consequent waste of its time.)

I’m very curious about what Stone meant by “Anything to save the plan.” As are members of the press and I’m sure the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

A subsequent text exchange obtained by The New York Times sums up the character of the people Trump keeps company with:

Credico to Stone: “You are an inveterate liar everybody knows that.”

Stone to Credico: “You ain’t exactly George Washington yourself.”

In Trump’s case, the apple doesn’t fall far from the cherry tree.