STONE COLD

I don’t know Roger Stone. Frankly, he seems a little weird. He has a website called www.stonezone.com.  He is clearly a legend in his own mind. He is a political commentator for InfoWars. He shared a duplex in Manhattan with Kristin Davis aka The Manhattan Madam.  She went to prison for running a prostitution ring and also selling drugs. Stone, to the say the least, has colorful friends.

He is close friends with Alex Jones who is well known for conspiracy theories some of which are absurd. For example, Alex Jones said the entire Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax:

“The general public doesn’t know the school was actually closed the year before. They don’t know they’ve sealed it all, demolished the building. They don’t know that they had the kids going in circles in and out of the building as a photo-op. Blue screen, green screens, they got caught using.”

The result is that no one should be shocked to learn that Roger Stone might have got his facts wrong. This means one can understand an indictment for lying. It does not justify a military style assault on his home at 6:00 a.m.  Stone says there were 29 FBI agents and 17 vehicles.  That, like a lot of things Stone says, is probably an exaggeration.  Other sources say there were about a dozen FBI agents. There certainly were a ton of people wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles. Maybe they were terrified at the prospect of being confronted by two Yorkshire terriers and three cats. Be still my soul!

The whole thing is on video because by pure coincidence CNN was parked across the street with a camera crew. I don’t know how many people where there, but this looked surreal. It also looked ridiculous. Stone is a very public figure, clearly represented by legal counsel who has been in touch with the Special Counsel. They could have just asked him to turn himself in and he almost certainly would have done that. The judge quickly released him with a signature bond for $250,000. Clearly the judge did not consider Stone to be a flight risk or any other kind of risk.

Perhaps one can justify a surprise raid, to preserve evidence. But this is the FBI and they have known where Stone lived for a long time. Does anyone really believe this house was not under surveillance? If they didn’t know exactly who was in that house, before the raid, they are hopelessly incompetent.  If they did know, they should have known there was little or no threat.

In addition, they either knew CNN was there with a camera crew and allowed them to video this, or they didn’t know CNN was there which would make them even more incompetent. No matter how you look at this, it looks bad. This has all the earmarks of a staged event designed to make Roger Stone look like a dangerous felon. Yet the FBI didn’t exactly knock down his door and make a forced entry. They banged on the door and yelled at him with a bullhorn.  Then he opened the door, standing there in his tee shirt, so they could handcuff him. The only people in the house were Roger Stone and his wife, who happens to be deaf.

So why do this? There are some reports that Rod Rosenstein would have had to personally approve this. Seriously? Rosenstein signed off on this fiasco? Where is Christopher Wray on this? Has anyone asked him if he knew about it and approved of this? What about the Acting Attorney General? What he aware of this? Did he approve of this? Who was the idiot who thought this was a good idea? There are a lot more questions than answers.

It was made even worse by the public appearance of Roger Stone following the arrest. He literally came out holding his arms in the air with his fingers in a “v” for victory pose. Granted, he looked ridiculous, but he hardly looked like a threat. Like I said, mostly weird.

I read the indictment and frankly, it looks pretty silly. At worst, we have one kind of weird guy from Florida who appears to routinely exaggerate his own importance. Who cares? There is no mention of him colluding with Russia. He is just accused of saying things that aren’t true and then trying to get other people to cover for him. Big deal. This is worthy of FBI storm troopers invading his home at 6:00 a.m. to give CNN a photo op.

Trump gave the perfect response. If this is the crime of the century, why haven’t other people, like Hillary Clinton, James Comey, John Brennan and James Clapper, who all were caught lying to congress, been indicted? When is the FBI going to show up at their homes at 6:00 a.m.? Good question.

TDM