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| Donald Trump and Roger Stone |
Roger Stone's career as an oily Republican Party operative began with Richard Nixon's Watergate and runs right up to Donald Trump's present-day alleged crime spree. In short, Stone served as a "dirty tricks" artist for perhaps the two most crooked individuals to ever occupy the White House. That probably tells you all you need to know about Stone. But the latest episode in Stone's saga helps solidify his legacy as a grease spot on the highway of history.
That Stone is a con man has been a longtime entry on his resume; words like "bag man" and "sabotage" tend to crop up in news profiles of him. But the latest episode in the Stone saga reveals that he not only is a shady character, but he also is inept -- almost dangerously so, at least for the candidates he is supposed to be boosting.
In the current case, that candidate is Donald Trump, and Stone not only is caught on film committing a con job, it's one that destroys one of Trump's primary defenses in the stack of indictments he faces, especially the election-interference case in Washington, D.C. From a report at The New Republic (TNR), under the headline "New Explosive Roger Stone Video Dooms Donald Trump’s Main Legal Defense; The video was filmed before the election results had even been announced."
Oops!
TNR's Ella Sherman has the details:
New explosive footage of Roger Stone strategizing to overturn the 2020 presidential election—before the vote was even called for Joe Biden—dooms Donald Trump’s main legal defense.
The video, aired recently on MSNBC and shot by filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen, depicts the right-wing lobbyist dictating a fake-elector plot in key battleground states. The video was taken on November 5, 2020, two days before the election was called, thus disproving Trump’s main defense that he and his allies genuinely believed they had won the race.
“Any legislative body may decide on the basis of overwhelming evidence of fraud to send electors to the electoral college who accurately reflect the president’s legitimate victory in their state which was illegally denied him through fraud,” Stone said, as an associate transcribed his words. “We must be prepared to lobby our Republican legislatures … by personal contact and by demonstrating the overwhelming will of the people in their state—in each state—that this may need to happen.”
Perhaps this film should be titled Roger Stone: Caught in the Act!
That Trump would be the victim of Stone's ineptitude might not be amusing to the MAGA crowd, but it is likely to elicit a smile from normal people. Writes Sherman:
Trump was indicted for the fourth time and charged with 13 counts in Georgia last week.
Stone is not named as a co-defendant in the indictment. He could, however, potentially be one of the 30 unnamed, co-conspirators.
The clip was part of Guldbrandsen’s documentary, A Storm Foretold, released in March of this year. Guldbrandsen told The Daily Beast that Stone was “upset” when the documentary aired. (I'll bet. Stone's not used to being filmed while in the midst of a con job.)
In another clip from the documentary taken on November 1, 2020, Stone said Trump needed to claim victory early on election night.
“I really do suspect it’ll still be up in the air. When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” he said.
(Hah! As if Roger Stone knows, or cares, anything about the law.)
By the way, Stone long has been associated with the term "ratf----king," which (best we can tell) is an obscene form of screwing someone over. We here at Legal Schnauzer have been the targets of a Roger Stone "ratf----king" operation, so we have a pretty good feel for what it's like to be on the receiving end of one of his buffoonish, threatening, nasty, perhaps unlawful, missions. More on that coming up.
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