Free Roger Stone By Mark Penn

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Free Roger Stone
By Mark Penn, opinion contributor — 02/19/20 10:45 AM EST

Attorney General William Barr is right that presidential tweets on Department of Justice (DOJ) cases make his job difficult in today’s super-charged political environment. But President Trump is also right that the case of his associate, Roger Stone, is nothing but a political prosecution that, until the president tweeted about it, got little attention or examination.

For all the hullabaloo about Trump’s tweets, which are nothing more than an expression of opinion, remember that in five of the last six special or independent counsel investigations, such interventions were not at all unusual. Both Democratic and Republican presidents pardoned numerous figures caught in the penumbra of those probes, especially those prosecuted for process crimes. President George H.W. Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger even before his trial for allegedly lying to an independent counsel; President Bill Clinton pardoned most of the Whitewater figures who were his friends, and even President Barack Obama pardoned Gen. James Cartwright, his “favorite general,” after Cartwright pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Just untangling what the Stone case is about can be a mindbender. Stone publicly bragged about a direct line to WikiLeaks, then downplayed or omitted in congressional interviews his contacts with radio host and political activist Randy Credico after acknowledging he had been in touch with Jerome Corsi, a well-known conspiracy theorist. He did not turn over to Congress these communications or a text to the Trump campaign that “the package” was coming. No actual contacts with WikiLeaks were found, and there was nothing illegal about any of these communications, so concealing them had no point. Stone then wrote some over-the-top texts to Credico with allusions to “The Godfather” and threatened Credico’s dog. Critically, Credico testified that he did not take these texts seriously based on his relationship with Stone. So, the “victim” of this intimidation saw them as typical Stone hyperbole.

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https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/483620-free-roger-stone

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Presumably, Stone’s “intimidating” texts then served as justification for arresting him with an armada of 26 armed officers, weapons drawn, and an amphibious unit out back in case he had a speedboat ready for a mad dash to Cuba or Venezuela. The raid, conveniently broadcast by CNN, telegraphed to the world that Stone was a danger to the republic of the highest order.

On top of this, Stone drew the same judge that threw Manafort into solitary confinement and denied him reasonable bail. Stone didn’t have a passport, so the judge was unable to repeat that here; instead, she issued a gag order, ostensibly to prevent him from tainting the jury pool — a pool that had been tainted by the very public raid that CNN was there to cover in all its armed glory.