Credico Feared Stone Would Go to Prison; Corsi’s Lawyer Fears He Would Not
As you heard, last night Donald Trump commuted the sentence of his rat-fucker.
There’s a lot to say about whether Trump will succeed in his effort to thwart the investigation into himself. I guess I know how I’ll be spending the remaining 12 days of my quarantine: considering just that question.
I’d like to start by pointing to a curious dynamic: Randy Credico, who played a key public role in Stone’s trial and who destroyed the cover story Stone had started crafting as early as 2016, feared that Stone would go to prison and Stone’s thuggish racist buddies would harass him or worse in retaliation.
Minutes before the actual commutation, by contrast, the “lawyer” for Jerome Corsi, Larry Klayman, wrote a post arguing that Trump shouldn’t pardon Stone, in part because Stone is so guilty…
Roger Stone, contrary to the spin that is peddled by his surrogates at Fox News and elsewhere, was justly convicted of seven felony counts of perjury, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. I know because I sat in the courtroom listening and observing during his two-week trial, while the pundits seeking to gain political favor with the president by supporting his supposed friend Stone did not. Regardless of whether the judge, Amy Berman Jackson, or the jury foreperson, was biased against Stone, the hard fact of life is that Stone’s lawyers, who could have themselves been indicted for providing false information to Congress on their client’s behalf, did not present one witness, repeat, one witness, including Stone himself, in defense of the prosecutors’ case in chief.
Though Stone sat at counsel’s table frequently smirking and smiling during the trial, the bottom line is that regardless of any bias, the now-convicted felon had no defense. This in a nutshell is why he does not want a new trial, even in another forum outside of Washington, D.C., because he was convicted by his own words and deeds.
… And in part because Stone came after Credico and Klayman.
While you have done many good things in office, you need independent voters in Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and other so-called swing states to win reelection, so don’t blow it with a pardon for Roger Stone. He is not worth it! Believe me, I know. And, if you want to see why, just pick up a copy of my autobiography, “Whores: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment!” which chronicles my personal experience with this self-styled Mafia admirer and dirty trickster.
Or go on the Pacer court internet system and find the defamation complaints in Florida and elsewhere that I have been forced to file against him for my brave client Dr. Corsi and me, whom Stone smeared with disgusting slander and libel because he feared that Corsi would testify against him in his criminal trial – something Jerry never wanted to do.
Admittedly, Klayman is selling a book. Maybe that’s all there is to this.
But, as I laid out here, the real dispute between Corsi and Stone has to do with whether Corsi told the truth when he told Mueller’s prosecutors and the grand jury that an August 31, 2016 report he wrote on John Podesta was done to provide Stone a cover story for his “time in a barrel” tweet about Podesta.
Corsi himself told a lot of lies to prosecutors. But he’s willing to confront Stone — and Trump — to insist that that testimony was true.
Randy Credico, who has no fucking clue what Roger Stone did, but who played a significant part in getting him convicted, feared that Roger Stone would go to prison. But Corsi’s team, who has a much better sense what Stone did yet played little part in getting Stone convicted, feared Stone would not go to prison.
I am glad that the nomenclature for Klayman is “lawyer” because, well, even that is hard to muster.
Adding that Klayman’s rant is also a comment on Stone maintaining his Fifth, which every defendant has a right to do. Just BS. Even when Klayman is right, he is an idiot.
Some folks best is an ugly wurst. I put that together myself, donchaknow…
I took it as less a swipe against the 5th, more just noting Stone’s total defense was… nothing, just a smirk knowing he’d be pardoned or commuted, while the government readily proved Its case. Sure, that’s a good justifiable strategy with an incompetent or iffy prosecution. It’s an ugly corrupt strategy when your only defense in the face of overwhelming evidence is to have a crooked president in your pocket, especially as obvious as Stone & Trump made it.
Do you foresee a Congressional subpoena(s) with an immunity offer? Disappointing as it is to see Stone’s sentence commuted, one must remember he’s not the target. If Congressional testimony was scheduled, how soon? And if Stone declines, then what…another commutation by Trump for the contempt? Can the President even do that? It’s hard to imagine Barr’s Justice Department getting too excited about a prosecution, in any event. As Bill Murray said in “Tootsie”, “we’re getting into a very weird area.”
Lol, no. This Congress, the 116th, will never do that.
The Senate is run by McConnell and Graham and they would never. The House may technically be controlled by the Democrats, but Pelosi and Hoyer don’t even allow general oversight, much less aggressive subpoena actions. And even if a subpoena were to be issued, it would have to be enforced in court, which they now totally refuse to do effectively.
Any “immunity grant” from Congress, while it does not technically need the sign off of the DOJ, does have to be enforced by a federal court. After engaging in, and winning, the subpoena enforcement, which, again, Pelosi and Hoyer won’t sanction.
I cannot emphasize enough how this kind of speculation is not only through rose colored glasses, it is just not going to happen. This is in the if pigs could fly department.
Hopefully, I can get some new glasses in January.
Hey, am pretty sure you know, it is not that I would not like that view, I very much would.
I do know; and thanks for guiding my thinking in a more realistic direction.
It all truly sucks. As MLK intoned, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” is true, but that arc is awfully long and subject to horrible fits and starts in the meantime.
The current period is certainly that. The Founders, as imperfect as they personally were, sought to create a government that could endure such troubles. They did an absolutely astounding job of that.
But, in the end, all forms of representative governance depend on minimal baseline good faith of the elected and selected representatives, whether in the Congress, Executive or Judiciary. That vision has so endured for the most part, but is really being tested currently.
The reality that is only peeking through the late-night MSM is that the GOP’s good faith is non-existent. I mean, Jordan, Gohmert, Sessions, Lindsey? Please.
The GOP would rather tear up representative government in order to maintain power over an electorate that is increasingly rejecting them. There’s no way to bothsidesism that and still deal with it.
There is one discouraging sign, which is that the legislative appropriations bill for the next fiscal year coming out of the House have a very modest bump in funding overall, a bit more than 5% or somewhat less than $300 million.
That is not going to fund the kind of staff buildup needed to reassert the oversight congress needs to do.
They are going to have to use that money for the usual bump in employee health care, probably increase security in the wake of the armed anti-mask protests, and they will have huge legislative responsibilities. That doesn’t leave much for oversight and investigations. It’s a rounding error for a lot of executive branch agencies.
If this funding level sticks, and it probably will be close, I doubt there will be the kind of structural change in approach needed.
On the possible good side, if the Dems retake the Senate, there are some opportunties for joint action and sharing of resources, which has been blocked. And having Biden elected, if it happens, would open up some very useful federal government cooperation.
But the resourcing in the next bill is basically status quo from the years when the GOP wanted to starve Congress of staffing and authority.
Bmaz, I completely agree with you. Pelosi and Hoyer are pathetic. Enablers, really.
Their behavior is consistent with the premise that someone out there has kompromat on them. That doesn’t mean that the premise is true. There are other possible explanations for their behavior.
What we have learned is that Congress has no independent power to compel testimony if the Department of Justice does not want that testimony compelled. The earliest that congressional subpoenas on the 2016 presidential election will be enforced is January of next year.
And anybody involved in this will try to put himself outside the reach of extradition the minute Biden wins the election, notwithstanding a pardon from Trump.
If the House had ever really, and aggressively tried, your statement would not be true. They have the power, but it has to be used competently.
But they never really did, even during the bizarrely brief moment leadership entertained their impeachment power, so your statement is, sadly, true.
A good example is the chair of the Ways and Means Committee has the authority to scare the hair off the head of a Treasury Secretary. A guy like Dan Rostenkowski would have made it clear to Mnuchin that he was never working on Wall Street again if he crossed him.
Richard Neal? Ha.
Another example would be less conflicted. House Democratic leader Rostenkowski pleaded guilty to a federal felony related to the Congressional Post Office scandal, went to prison, and was controversially pardoned by Bill Clinton a few years later, on his way out the door. But as a long-time pol out of Chicago, he knew how to use power, and used it effectively, even during Reagan’s tenure.
The Rostenkowski prosecution was grossly out of proportion to what he did. It was a Whitewater style mess which was determined to find something to hang on him. Compared to other cases of prosecutors going overboard, like the Central Park Five, it’s a minor abuse, but he never should have gone to prison, and should have been allowed to cop to something minor, or nothing at all. He was no William Jefferson.
Dan Rostenkowski was operating in a different time when extremist Republicans didn’t dominate our government. I would bet that one reason Democrats didn’t try to force testimony is that they were afraid our right wing Supreme Court wouldn’t back them up and would totally destroy the “equal branch” standing of Congress. It’s the SC that has the final say.
Speaking of the SC I had a conversation with my adult kids about the SC. I pointed out to them the the absolute worst judges in recent rulings were not the ones appointed by Trump they were Alison and Thomas, the ones appointed by the Bushes, people the media are still trying to keep on a pedestal. My son replied that tells you a lot about the Republican Party – the rot didn’t start with Trump.
Stop Press: House Speaker halts legislative train en route to the Senate’s Donner Pass, to add another wagon. Legislation to limit the President’s constitutionally authorized pardon power. Is Timothy Leary mixing drinks on Capitol Hill?
It’s a practically moot point anyway.
We already have a recent example of such an action running its course: Holder Fast & Furious subpoena and contempt.
It took seven years for White House, of completely different administration, and Congress to both disagree with Jackson and agree to drop the case than both be subjected to orders they all disliked.
The matter hadn’t even run its full judicial course.
Mueller documents subpoena’ed in 2019 _might_ have finally gotten resolved by the time humans land on Mars.
Ms. Pelosi is an expert in acquiring and using political power. She would likely be the first to admit over a glass of wine from her vineyard that if you don’t use it, it’s no longer power.
She’s an expert in manipulating expectations to her advantage. There is no evidence that she really understands deeply how power really works in attempting to salvage a failing Republic and its institutions. To put it another way, how many people were bouyed up by her inability to hold Trump and the Trump gang to accounts these past few years? She’s a “wait-and-see” kind of politician when it comes to crisis. That’s not a good person to have around when there is a real and existentially obvious crisis that needs handling now or should be dealt with well in advance rather than put off for later if it becomes more inconvenient at some later date. All we have to do is look at the inept US response to Covid to see what all these “brilliant minds!” in Washington have given us… which, frankly, isn’t much more than bandaids and aging ideological platitudes with nothing much behind them when one looks behind the cardboard.
But they do have control of the money printing so now there’s theories floating around saying “Gee, good thing we control all that!” But, am I the only person to notice that prices are creeping up in grocery stores of late? Guess it’s hidden by the sudden glut of certain products caused by hoarding and over-production to compensate. I mean, I can buy bulk restaurant levels of stuff cheap on and off (depending on the winds of SIP or not blowharding around the country weekly and daily) but… for how long can business do that if they don’t keep getting money from the government to prop all of it all up? A month? A few weeks at most, right? Eventually, people will get tired of this and look for stronger leadership… maybe not better, but stronger… :(
I think your argument fails to distinguish her ability to acquire and use power with her priorities, priorities that some of us here disagree with.
I agree with those who say she is a fantastic tactician and I think her value would rise a lot in the short term if the Democrats are lucky and pick up the White House and Senate. Her job at that point would be to deliver votes and stay out of the limelight, and that is her specialty.
But if the Democrats are part of a split government, the pressure grows on her to deliver strategic planning, and I think her vision is very nearsighted. And unavoidably, the need for strategic vision is needed for a speaker even if the Democrats can manage to run the table. The role and authority of Congress needs to change, and she definitely lacks the vision and the planning skills to start the process. The planning needed to start in 2018, and it hasn’t happened.
Can’t argue with her tactical ability within the constraints of the current Republic and the current Congress. The problem is when her tactical ability has to rein in a person like Trump. “Impeachment is off the table” isn’t worth spit at that point.
So is it Corsi’s time in the barrel now?
FBI coming with a warrant?
Nope. This is all done and over.
Ah, got it. Thought that’s where Marcy was going with this.
Interesting.
Via Atlantic: “It is not illegal for a U.S. citizen to act or attempt to act as a go-between between a presidential campaign and a foreign intelligence agency, and Stone was not charged with any crime in conjunction with his Trump-WikiLeaks communications. But it’s a different story for the campaign itself. At a minimum, the Trump campaign was vulnerable to charges of violating election laws against receiving things of value from non-U.S. persons.”
So can the campaign itself be charged? And who would carry out the charging?
What planet are they on?
The law is a floor that defines minimally acceptable social behavior. Behavior below that minimal standard it prosecutes. It is not a ceiling.
The Atlantic seems to be playing footsie with “go-between,” as if that adequately described Stone’s conduct, instead of serving as a euphemism for his explicitly illegal conduct. It knows better.
Missing my major point – if a president’s not able to pardon his campaign or other legal entity (a question), what orgs would be on zhe Hook (even if Directors And executives of said orgs could presumably also be pardoned).
Or does “corporations are people too” apply to presidential pardons?
Enforcement of federal election laws is by both the currently defunct FEC and the equally defunct, under Barr, DoJ. So, notgonnahappen until after January 20th. But the general statute of limitation is five years. Enforcement would be against the violator, normally, the legal entity(-ies) created to conduct the campaign, and any individuals implicated by the evidence.
I defer to bmaz, but criminal cases can be prosecuted against corporations. Because corporations act only through human agents, however, the humans are normally the persons prosecuted. They are also the persons a president would most want to protect.
Got a link to that piece in The Atlantic? Thanks.
It appears to be this one, by David Frum, from this morning: “Stone Walks Free in the One of the Greatest Scandals in American History.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/roger-stone/614068/
Slightly O/T, but there’s something I don’t understand about Stone’s commutation. The three main characters in the Russia/Wikileaks/Trump story are Trump, Stone and Assange. Even Trump is smart enough to keep quiet; Stone’s silence has been bought; which leaves Assange.
The DoJ is hardly being soft on Assange so what’s the explanation? Is he effectively muzzled, or is he too afraid of someone in Russia to speak out? I feel I’m missing something obvious.
I’ve been puzzling over DOJ’s treatment of Assange for a while. It seems inconsistent with Barr’s general desire to sweep any 2016 election related investigations under the rug. Even if they’re going after him for other leaks, not asking about his role in the 2016 election would be a glaring omission.
I suspect Assange’s treatment has to do with his career body of work, and especially his exposure of US war crimes. Killing him via the legal process has been one of the few truly bipartisan goals of the American political class for over a decade.
What a complete load of shit. I suspect you do not understand squat. Thanks for dropping by Assanginista!
One of the things that has been nagging at me is whether commuting Stone’s sentence is simply about buying his silence, or if part of the deal is getting him to restart projects that were put on hold by the arrest.
I wonder whether Corsi wanted Stone locked up due to some kind of turf war or business squabble.
Regardless, I’m curious if Stone jumps back into legal jeopardy right away and what that would mean.
Well, Roger will need to refill his piggy bank, so I expect Trump’s campaign will find some dirty tricks for him to do.
They’ll hire him to fetch the covfefe.
The MSM seems confused about Donald Trump and his no good, very bad clemency. Some commentators think Trump refused to give Roger a full pardon because Bill Barr told him that if he did, the DoJ would revolt. How sad, and how irrelevant to a personality like Trump.
The DoJ might well revolt: Trump’s clemency is no more proper or defensible than a pardon. But the reason he commuted Roger’s sentence was so that Roger could retain his Fifth Amendment right to avoid answering questions that might tend to incriminate him. A pardon would have removed his legal jeopardy, and left Roger with no excuse to practice omerta.
True, in normal times, presidential clemency for a convicted felon like Roger Stone would doom the political prospects of the president. But these are not normal times. None of the players nor the entire Republican Party care how many crimes Trump commits, if he holds onto the Oval Office and does not sic his baying boogaloo boy hounds on them. And Trump didn’t even have to buy the brown shirts.
Another MSM meme is that Trump offers pardons or clemency to people he knows, his “friends.” That’s false, too. Trump cannot see beyond his own reflection. He’s not helping friends. He’s helping himself – to whatever’s not nailed down; even then, he brings a pry bar and a lawyer, like that couple in St. Louis.
Trump has no friends.
What the hell are these people smoking?
NYT refers to Trump “bending the legal system to his advantage”, which led me to wonder if they ever described a Catholic priest “bending an altar boy to his advantage”.
The NYT has been leaning into journalism for some time. Next, it will practice it. Once perfected, it might let some of it into print. Meanwhile, it has its political desk to lean on.
KAGA Killers Are Governing America
https://media4.s-nbcnews.com/i/newscms/2020_28/3396297/201107-rogerstone-er-115am_ccf094ffd567d09efe04ed3260fd7b45.jpg
I left this on the Reggie Walton post, but I probably should have put it here instead. It’s been one of those days. It took me until supper time before I realized I was wearing my shirt inside out :-(
“Robert Mueller: Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so” – The Washington Post, 7/11/20
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/11/mueller-stone-oped/
Someone earlier posted a link to this Pro Publica article on Donald Trump’s accountants. It is well worth a read, especially if you can compare it with the earlier NYT’s expose. Both might be useful background, if you’re planning to read Mary Trump’s book. https://www.propublica.org/article/meet-the-shadowy-accountants-who-do-trumps-taxes-and-help-him-seem-richer-than-he-is
Trump has used the same accounting firm for decades, the one his dad used for decades – although Fred was known for being a detail guy who paid his bills early. Donald rarely pays his bills – he thinks his vendors should pay him for the privilege. His accountants eventually had to cut him a deal to get paid at all – a 50% discount and 12 months to pay. I’ve only heard terms like that from contractors who work for mob-financed shopping malls.
In all the years they’ve worked for him, Donald’s accountants appear never to have audited him. A guy who claims to be worth billions, who has had multiple several hundred million dollar bank loans – banks normally require audited statements – and everybody accepts his word about his cash flow and net worth. That’s how you deal with a guy like Al Capone.
Trump’s accountants just accepted his unverified, non-GAAP asset valuations, generally not discounted for associated debt (often well over 50%). From a guy who just makes shit up, the way he does every day in the White House. On a single deal, the Westchester property he wanted to turn into a golf course/condo project (Trump never got the required permissions and it tanked), Trump inflated his worth by over $250 million. No wonder the world thought he was a billionaire. The good news is that if there are violations – David Cay Johnston says that’s a dead cert – they are state as well as federal tax law violations. So a Trump/Pence pardon is not the key to the jailhouse door.
If there’s one (outside) guy who has an inkling of the inside of the Trump “Organization” (could a more mob-like name be envisioned?), it’s DCJ. The other guy who has a diagram to the cemetery? Michael Cohen. Plenty of incentive for revenge.
I see Judge Jackson is asking for a review (really a clarification) on the commutation, since she is not sure if it applied to the prison sentence only or to the probation as well.
I thought AG Barr was a better lawyer than that, leaving the strings out to be pulled. Or, is this supposed to be ambiguous to let the WH interpret it to fit the situation?
Other Twitter folk that I follow are saying that there is no commutation yet. I suspect this is because Barr has refused to allow DOJ personnel actually work on it. He is on record (at his confirmation hearing) for saying such an act of clemency would be tantamount to obstruction of justice. So, if DOJ participates in it, then Barr himself (or rather anyone he orders to do it) is part of a conspiracy to obstruct justice. Which, you know, would make it hard for him to remain Atty General and do all of the rest of Trump’s coverup work for him.
At least that’s how I piece the tea leaves together. The other question is can Trump commute a sentence that hasn’t actually occurred yet? That’s a legal question for bmaz or the other lawyers.
I don’t think Barr will help Trump do this. So then I guess some other atty has to?
If it is announced, it is done. And it is. Don’t buy into bullshit.
That it had not been found in the PACER database is not an indication that it lacks official status?
Nope, PACER is irrelevant to the Article II, Section 2 power.
I figured it hadn’t gotten into PACER because of the time it was announced. (I don’t expect that they have 24/7 data entry.)
viget – Barr left himself wiggle room in that confirmation statement by saying if it were done for an improper reason it would be obstruction.
It’s now on the DOJ site: it commuted probation also.
https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1282759146329309186
Yeah, bmaz was right as usual. Unfortunately.
I can only hope there are more surprises in store for Mr. Stone. This is a bitter pill to swallow.
I think the media narrative about Barr not being on board with Stone commutation is bull.
I can see Barr being the main enabler behind the Stone commutation, while in parallel feeding MSN with bogus concerns about Stone commutation.
MSN should know better than putting out garbage gossip as news.
I think that’s right. Barr is playing the media as much as he’s playing the lawyers in his DoJ. He would know never to explicitliy argue against something the president wanted so much. And clemency for Roger was written in stone long before Barr joined the DoJ. It was just a matter of when.
Whenever you start hearing reports that “the attorney general resisted the president’s wishes,” it’s time to lift the rock–again–and look for the Barr-affiliated leakers who are doing his bidding. He’s sustained this campaign of illusory “independence” since he auditioned for his current job.
In Barr’s case, resisting a Trump wish would seem to be a logical impossibility. He knows his mark too well. Trump’s grandiose imaginings are too in sync with Barr’s sense of how untouchable the president should be. After all, who can question the pope?
You would think that Trmp’s increasingly out-of-touch-with-reality babbling would tell Barr that it’s time to go.
If I were Paul Manafort, I’d be pissed. Manafort takes a plea deal in D.C. to avoid being a factor in the midterm elections, but now Trump commutes Stone’s sentence less than four months before Trump’s own reelection bid?
Manafort, and Cohen, now see that they’re not worth as much to Trmp as they’d been led to believe.
Flip Pro Flop
He knew how to crack a whip,
Give the boot through a tip,
Make sure faucets didn’t drip,
Refuse to honor any lip.
He didn’t have to shed one drop
of blood to kill, or have to mop
up after news he’d lop,
or wade through rivers of his slop.
He just had to stop a flip,
Clam up any frisky yip,
Cancel out a murky blip,
Make sure yaps were on full zip.
He didn’t have to put a stop
to any fuzz or stony prop,
Or seance with his long gone Pop,
No, Chump was owned to be a flop.
You have a talent for this, SL! I love seeing the Savage aspect of you roar out. And using a *repeated* aaaa bbbb rhyme scheme, no less–I always run out after the first couplet.
Thanks, GdiB, I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to find my Savage roar, and to promote some double entendres wherever I can find them. The poems that work best for me are the ones that start with strong, but vague, emotion, usually based on politics or current events. Then a rhythm or beat starts thunking around in my head. After that a word or phrase settles in.
Then I have something tangible to sort out with rhymes. I just run through the alphabet or whip out my pocket computer. Dictionaries and rhyming websites are my friends. Eventually, a miniature story emerges, sometimes in a matter of hours. More often over days or weeks. But, mostly, I think of my contributions as cheesy, but fun and therapeutic for some of us who pass through here.
When I was 8, my namesake aunt gave me a beautifully illustrated “A Child’s Garden of Verses” by Robert Louis Stevenson ( Gyo Fujikawa, illus.) that I still own and love. When I was 10, she gave me, “Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Poems Selected for Young People.” So, I need to credit her with an early appreciation for the magical power of words.