Roger Stone is already caving
On Saturday evening, Donald Trump did what he always does whenever his associates and underlings get indicted and arrested. He threw Roger Stone, his close friend of forty years, under the bus. Trump dishonestly tweeted that Stone was nowhere near his 2016 campaign. This kind of disloyalty has tended to backfire on Trump, and based on Stone’s words on Sunday morning, it just might be happening again.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller arrested Roger Stone for seven felonies, but the upshot of the indictment is that Stone was instructed to illegally conspire with foreign entity WikiLeaks by the uppermost levels of the Trump campaign. Stone has known for months that his arrest was inevitable, and he’s publicly vowed to fight Mueller every step of the way. This morning, however, he was already singing a different version of the song.
Roger Stone, who is out on bail, appeared on ABC This Week this morning. He claimed that he’s not aware of any wrongdoing within the Trump campaign, but if there is any, he’ll testify honestly about it. That kind of doublespeak was a bit generic, but then Stone got much more specific, saying that he’s willing to testify to Mueller about “any communications with the President. It’s true that we spoke on the phone, but those communications are political in nature.”
So much for Roger Stone’s longtime public stance that he would remain loyal to Donald Trump and hostile to Robert Mueller no matter how much legal jeopardy he ended up facing. It’s been two days since Stone’s arrest, and he’s already publicly offering to tell Mueller about his conversations with Trump. Sure, Stone may be planning to lie to Mueller about the nature of those conversations, as Stone is a habitual liar. But Stone is already offering to trade favors with Mueller, ostensibly in exchange for leniency. Stone is already caving.
