The extraordinary presence of the TV cameras made it clear that the heavy show of force was a message from Mueller to Stone and Trump. As former federal prosecutor Paul Butler described it, “This is personal.”75
Another former FBI agent, Danny Coulson, who rose to become FBI deputy assistant director, was appalled at the excessive use of force and the way Mueller had exploited the FBI to frighten and intimidate. He had made more than a thousand arrests during his career and had never used that kind of force for a white-collar suspect.76 Before the Bureau was “hijacked” by Mueller’s office, a defendant such as Stone—who had stated publicly that he expected to be indicted and vowed not to cooperate with the OSC—would have been told to self-surrender at an appointed date and time, especially because prosecutors knew that he was represented by counsel.
The bizarre scene raised questions about the judgment of not only Mueller but also FBI director Christopher Wray. And why had the CNN reporters shown up an hour before the raid? Had they been tipped off? The network attributed their fortuitous presence to “reporter’s instinct.”77
Was Mueller trying to get Stone to “sing . . . or compose” as Judge Ellis said in the Manafort case? Was the special counsel trying to goad Trump into firing him? Then Democrats could impeach Trump for obstruction of justice. Or maybe they were trying to terrify Stone into submission as it became clear that, with the investigation winding down, they had no evidence of “collusion” and needed another indictment for the body count.
The raid pointed up selective and unequal treatment by the FBI and DOJ. Hillary Clinton’s top aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, made false statements, and their emails proved it. Yet they were not charged; instead, they were given immunity in exchange for nothing. So if you were a friend of Hillary’s, you got a free pass. If you were Trump’s friend, you got guns in your face at dawn.
A dandy who writes a fashion blog, a former adviser to Richard Nixon and self-described dirty trickster, Stone’s peculiar personality and lurid speculations about Hillary and Bill Clinton had earned him a special loathing in Democrat circles.78
A coauthor of The Clintons’ War on Women, he portrayed the former president as a serial sex offender and Hillary as an enabler, both willing to commit diabolical deeds for power.79 He’s an equal-opportunity basher, however: as a coauthor of Jeb! And the Bush Crime Family, he earned the enmity of Republicans as well.80
But for all his flamboyance and preening, Stone is no different from many political hacks, pundits, and writers on both sides of the aisle who view American culture and politics through a conspiratorial lens.
More than any other single event, the abusive wielding of the OSC’s power in the arrest of Roger Stone revealed the rot at the heart of the entire investigation and the personal animosity of those driving it. Americans took notice when Trump tweeted: “Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country! NO COLLUSION! Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers are treated better. Who alerted CNN to be there?”81
Despite his enduring friendship with Trump, Stone had been fired from the campaign by the candidate in August 2015—though Stone said he had resigned voluntarily.82
The twenty-four-page indictment against Stone was filed on January 24, 2019, by three prosecutors from the District of Columbia and three from the Special Counsel’s Office, including Jeannie Rhee, who had represented Hillary on her email scandal and never should have been in the same room as they discussed this case.83
The gaseous windbag of a document told a tantalizing story about Trump, WikiLeaks, and Julian Assange, suggesting that Stone might have had some advance knowledge or inside information about the content of hacked Clinton campaign emails that were released by WikiLeaks in the summer of 2016. “A senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 [WikiLeaks] had regarding the Clinton campaign.”84
And there was the reference to the movie The Godfather Part II: to keep “Person 2” from ratting him out, Stone had allegedly told him to do a “Frank Pentangeli,” a reference to a person testifying before Congress who “claims not to know critical information that he does in fact know.”85
But the froth boiled down to process crimes: obstruction of an official proceeding by making false statements to the House Intelligence Committee, denying he had records, making false statements, and persuading a witness to provide false testimony. Together they exposed Stone to a sentence of up to fifty years in the slammer.86
I don’t want to minimize “process crimes.” No person should ever lie, mislead, or obstruct a legitimate law enforcement investigation. But none of the charges had anything to do with Trump-Russia “collusion.” It was not alleged that Stone had conspired with Russians to hack or steal documents.
But Stone was accused of reaching out to WikiLeaks and asking others to do so. As did hundreds of journalists, including myself. That’s not a crime. An examination of Stone’s emails shows that he provided little more than the same information that WikiLeaks had already stated publicly.
He speculated that the Clinton emails would be damaging. But that was stating the obvious. Trying to insert himself into the action, Stone created the appearance that he knew more than he did—a frequent habit of his.
He tried to contact Trump adviser Steve Bannon with his prediction about WikiLeaks but whined to an editor for Breitbart, “I’d tell Bannon, but he doesn’t call me back.” After the editor prodded Bannon, Bannon replied, “I’ve got important stuff to worry about.” Bannon finally did email Stone, who told him nothing that Assange hadn’t already said publicly. Then Stone insisted that Bannon get campaign surrogates to push his allegation that Bill Clinton had a black love child.87 It was as if, sidelined after decades of being in the middle of hot campaigns, Stone was desperate to be relevant.
Mueller’s job was to uncover crimes that had occurred before he was appointed. But his investigation generated or created Stone’s alleged offenses. Five of the charges against Stone were for making false statements to federal authorities. If he goes to trial, it will be exceedingly difficult for prosecutors to prove his guilt because the statute governing those offenses (18 U.S.C. § 1001) requires proof that the statements were “knowingly and willfully” false.
A faulty memory or diminished recollection is a complete defense. If Stone recalled events differently from the way Mueller interpreted them, it’s not a crime. Moreover, Stone amended some of his testimony with corrected statements, which will be introduced as evidence in his defense.
As Comey dismissively told the House Judiciary Committee regarding Abedin and Mills, “There’s always conflicting recollections of facts.”88
That from the same guy who twisted the facts and contorted the law to clear Clinton from the felony statutes she had so flagrantly violated. Comey’s buddy Mueller was now applying the same double standard of justice.
Stone did not retreat into silence after his arraignment but instead went on a media tour. “I think the American people need to hear about it,” he told the New York Times.89
Even before the raid, he insisted he had done nothing more than “posture, bluff, hype,” based on WikiLeaks’ Twitter feed and tips from others who were following Assange. “I didn’t need any inside knowledge to do that. They keep looking for some direct communications with WikiLeaks that doesn’t exist.”90
And despite Clapper’s opining that Stone’s indictment revealed “connection, coordination, synchronization, whatever you want to call it,” the opposite was true.91 If the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to hack and release DNC emails through WikiLeaks, why did they need Stone to contact Assange?
After Stone’s arrest, Trump said he had never spoken with his friend about WikiLeaks and the stolen DNC emails, nor had he directed anyone to do so.92
Mueller filed a motion in February 2019 that he had evidence that Stone had communicated with WikiLeaks. His source was convicted perjurer Michael Cohen. He
claimed to have been in Trump’s office during a call when Stone was on the speaker. “Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that, within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of ‘wouldn’t that be great.’ ”93
Stone denied it, and WikiLeaks responded via Twitter, saying “WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange has never had a telephone call with Roger Stone.” If Cohen is the only source, good luck trying to prove that allegation in court.94
The allegation of witness tampering involved communications Stone had exchanged with Randy Credico, a radio host who had interviewed Assange. Stone’s emails implied that Credico had been his “back channel” to WikiLeaks but this was later discounted as an exaggeration.95
Mueller alleged that Stone had obstructed justice by threatening Credico if he talked. “If you testify you’re a fool,” Stone said in one message to Credico. “I guarantee you you [sic] are the one who gets indicted for perjury if you’re stupid enough to testify.”96
Stone insisted that the exchanges had been humorous, that texts before and after the ones in question were jocular, undercutting the notion that Credico might have felt threatened. “They’re taking things out of context to present them in a light that mischaracterizes their significance. I never told Mr. Credico to lie.”
He said he had forgotten about some exchanges with Credico when he told House investigators that they did not exist. “I am human and I did make some errors, but they’re errors that would be inconsequential in the scope of this investigation.”
Though once friends, the two men fell out over the investigation into collusion. “You are an inveterate liar everybody knows that,” Credico texted to Stone in May 2018. Stone texted back, “You ain’t exactly George Washington yourself.”97
Insisting he would “fight to the bitter end,” facing what he predicted would be $2 million in legal fees, Stone put out an appeal for donations to his legal defense fund. He and his wife moved to a smaller condo and canceled their medical insurance to economize.98 Stone has pleaded not guilty and asked the court to dismiss the charges.99
Targeting Jerome Corsi
In their effort to build a case against Stone, Mueller’s team targeted conservative radio host Jerome Corsi, a correspondent for WorldNetDaily and Infowars. Author of many controversial books, Corsi is most famous for claiming Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, as detailed in his book Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to Be President.100
Corsi, who had known Trump for years, talked to Stone for the first time on February 22, 2016, for a piece on Stone’s book about the Bush family. The Trump campaign was heating up. Stone was on the outside but claimed he had still talked to Trump by phone “every day,” offering political advice and strategy.
The men met for dinner and talked about how to support Trump’s presidential campaign, later exchanging emails and texts. “I crossed over from the reporter’s role to work behind the scenes as a political operative, working secretly with Roger Stone to engineer events that would affect the news cycle favorably for the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election,” Corsi wrote in Silent No More: How I Became a Political Prisoner of Mueller’s “Witch Hunt,” a book about his experience with Team Mueller.101
On August 28, 2018, two FBI agents rang the doorbell of his home in northern New Jersey. He was shaken but not surprised. Corsi knew the Mueller team was interviewing Stone’s contacts about his interactions with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. They presented him with a subpoena to appear before a grand jury in ten days.102
Corsi said he would contact his attorney and get back in touch with them. After conferring with his lawyer, David Gray, who explained that the FBI would have a harder time of establishing that he had intended to lie if he cooperated voluntarily, Corsi agreed. However, he was wary. “Even with the advice of David Gray, I was not sure I could avoid a perjury trap, even though I fully intended to tell the truth,” he wrote.103
Gray notified President Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow that Corsi had been subpoenaed. They entered into a verbal “mutual defense” agreement, which allowed them to share information privately.
On September 6, 2018, Corsi and Gray went to Washington, DC, and met with prosecutors Aaron Zelinsky, Jeannie Rhee, and Andrew Goldstein and a phalanx of FBI agents. Corsi voluntarily turned over his phone, two laptops, a Time Machine application with a backup hard drive, and access to his email accounts. He assumed they had all his communications anyway.
The conversation turned to Julian Assange. Corsi said that although Stone had wanted him to contact Assange, he had declined, not willing to involve himself in the inevitable intelligence investigations that would follow.104
The meeting “blew up,” with the prosecutors and FBI agents walking out.
Corsi was left alone for an hour and a half to wonder what crime he’d committed. Rhee and Zelinksy returned, “visibly agitated.”
“We have demonstrable proof that what you said was false,” Zelinksy said.
Rhee said she was glad he had not made the statement about Assange to the grand jury. “It would be extremely difficult to expunge that testimony from the record.” Meaning that if Corsi lied, he’d be a poor witness against Stone. Zelinsky said he had a week to review his emails and come back. They returned his laptops and Time Machine external hard drive backup.
Corsi had not reviewed his emails prior to the interrogation. At home, he reloaded 60,000 old emails on a new computer and examined them. Only then did he realized that he had forgotten a lot of them.
After the first big Clinton-related email dump by WikiLeaks in March 2016, it was no secret that there was more to come. In June 2016, Assange told The Guardian that WikiLeaks had been planning to publish emails sent and received when Clinton was secretary of state.105
Corsi found an email from Stone on July 25 with the subject line “Get to Assange.” The text read, “At the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and get the pending WikiLeaks emails . . . they deal with [Clinton] Foundation, allegedly.”106
WikiLeaks had been dropping DNC emails over the previous few days to coincide with the beginning of the Democrat National Convention. The furor over the DNC’s treatment of Bernie Sanders would result in the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Corsi had forwarded the email to Ted Malloch in London, whom he had met while researching the Clinton Foundation, with a simple message: “Ted. From Roger Stone. Jerry.”107
Stone and Malloch, a professor and senior fellow at the Saïd Business School at Oxford University, had met at a dinner set up by Corsi. A strong Trump supporter, Malloch, who had served on the executive board of the World Economic Forum at Davos, was no gumshoe. As Corsi had anticipated, Malloch did not contact Assange.
Corsi found other emails from Stone and other people he had forgotten. While in Italy to celebrate his wedding anniversary, his WorldNetDaily editor, Joseph Farah, emailed him, upset that no one had contacted Assange. Corsi replied, “We can reach Assange, but someone may have to go to London. I’m sure if we went to the embassy, he would talk to us.”108
But Farah didn’t assign the story to Corsi, so nothing ever came of it. And if he had, it would not have been a crime for Corsi, a journalist, to talk to Assange.
Corsi published a story on August 15, 2016, about Stone, who claimed that his computer and personal bank accounts had been hacked for declaring that WikiLeaks had obtained Clinton’s 30,000 scrubbed emails and was planning to release them.
From open-source research on WikiLeaks, his knowledge about computer infrastructure, and his personal study of John Podesta, Corsi theorized that Assange didn’t have Clinton’s emails. He had Podesta’s emails, and he’d drop them in October, in a drip-drip-drip style for maximum effect. Corsi explained his theory to Stone. On August 21, 2016, Stone posted on Twitter:
“Trust me, it will soon [be] Podesta’s time in the barrel.”109
At the time, that was interpreted by many as proof that Stone had “advance knowledge” that the emails Assange had yet to publish were Podesta’s.
“This is the central email that had become the focus of the Special Counsel’s criminal investigation,” Corsi wrote. “Stone was the link between Julian Assange and Donald Trump that was essential if the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia” were to be proved. Mueller wanted to use Corsi to prove the link between Stone and Assange.110
After Stone took heat for his tweet regarding Podesta, Corsi sent him a lengthy background memo on Podesta to be used as a “cover story.” Corsi then wrote a piece for Infowars titled “ ‘Blame Me!’ Corsi says. ‘Not Assange.’ ”111
Corsi didn’t consider that fake story immoral or illegal. It was just politics.112
In his next interview with Team Mueller, Corsi explained that he’d found three emails he’d exchanged in 2016 with Stone that he had not remembered. With Mueller’s consent, he amended his earlier statements.113
“What astonished Zelinksy and the Special Counsel’s prosecutorial team was how I had obtained information this accurate in July and August, months before Assange began dropping Podesta’s emails on October 7, 2016,” Corsi wrote.
They believed not only that Corsi had a direct connection to Assange but that he’d played a role in timing the WikiLeaks October release after Stone had tipped Corsi off about the Access Hollywood tape, which would soon be leaked, and asked him to get word to Assange. However, with access to all Corsi’s communications, they couldn’t find his connection.
Zelinsky pushed Corsi to remember by using a regression technique. He urged Corsi to imagine himself back in Italy on his vacation when his editor had emailed him about Assange. Whom had he talked to? Corsi tried to cooperate but failed to conjure up a person giving him secret details on Assange. “I think if we continue this, I will be telling you next that I was Alexander the Great in a former life,” he said.114
Witch Hunt Page 42