The Trump People Really Really Want to Know How Much Mueller Knows about Roger Stone’s “Collusion”

In a piece that lets Roger Stone claim he un-forgot the Russian he met offering Hillary dirt for $2 million and also fails to ask Stone why it took over a month for him to correct his perjury before HPSCI and also fails to ask if there was follow-up about someone else paying for that dirt on Hillary, Ken Dilanian lets Stone float a claim that Mueller must have obtained the contents of his phone using a FISA order.

Stone also wondered to NBC News how Mueller “has copies of my text messages if not through an illegal FISA warrant. I have filed a notice of my intention to bring a lawsuit against the government for a civil rights and right to privacy violation to get to the bottom of that question.”

As I have noted repeatedly, close to the beginning of the time when Mueller has focused unrelentingly on Stone, on March 9, Mueller obtained a probable cause search warrant to obtain the contents of 5 AT&T phones, “In the Matter of the Search of Information Associated with Five Telephone Numbers Controlled by AT&T (D.D.C.) (18-sc-609).” When Paul Manafort attempted to unseal the parts of the affidavit laying out the probable cause for those phones covered by the warrant that he didn’t own, Amy Berman Jackson refused the request. The court record makes it fairly clear that the other phones don’t belong to Manafort.

THE COURT: What if — I think one of them is about phone information. What if the redacted phones are not his phone?

MR. WESTLING: I don’t have a problem with that. I think we’re talking about things that relate to this defendant in this case.

We should assume that, in addition to those five phones, there’s a warrant covering a proportional number (Verizon covers more of the cell phone market in the US than AT&T does) of Verizon phones.

All of which is to say that the most obvious explanation for how Mueller obtained the text messages Stone has selectively shared with the press showing he did accept a meeting with a Russian offering dirt on Hillary Clinton is that Mueller convinced a judge there was probable cause to believe that there was evidence of crimes were on that phone.

That is, the interest in Roger Stone is no longer strictly a counterintelligence question of whether Henry Greenberg was idly reaching out to Stone to offer dirt. Rather, it’s a question of whether, in his subsequent response (about which no journalist seems to have asked Stone questions) constitutes a crime.

In any case, Roger Stone’s attempt to turn this into another FISA pseudo scandal (including his suggestion that any warrant targeting him would be “illegal”) is just a desperate indication of how badly the Trump people want to know how much Mueller knows about the crimes Stone may have committed.

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27 replies
  1. pseudonymous in nc says:

    Stone’s lawyer (at least in the letter to Senate Intel) is a Grant Smith of Fort Lauderdale, who was apparently part of the Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler firm where all three named partners went to jail in 2015 for a Ponzi scheme. His father, former congressman Larry Smith, was convicted of tax fraud in 1993.

    Somehow I think Roger Ratfucker will need better representation if he’s planning an actual lawsuit. Which he isn’t, because his intention is to file a list of requests to Devin Nunes.

  2. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Dilanian and NBC seem addicted to spreading the lying quote – as they do in the piece cited above – and leave the reader dangling, like a misplaced pardon, without knowing where to go.

    Roger Stone says he forgot meeting with Russian who offered Clinton dirt.

    No context.  No refuting arguments.  No responsible headlines that might make the claim obviously false even to a casual reader.  More of them should know about this site.

  3. Trip says:

    Russian oligarch who bought real estate from Trump in shady 2008 deal has allegedly invested half billion dollars in U.S. biotech

    The newsletter The Bell says it’s learned that Dmitry Rybolovlev, the former owner of the Russian fertilizer company “Uralkali” and a potential suspect in Robert Mueller’s investigation, has invested more than half a billion dollars in American biotech and medtech startups over the past several years. Rybolovlev is reportedly the main investor in the $1.5-billion American private equity and venture capital firm “Apple Tree Partners.”….In March 2008, after the U.S. real-estate bubble started to “lose air,” Rybolovlev bought an estate from Trump in Palm Beach for $95 million. Just four years earlier, Trump had acquired the property for a mere $41 million, according to Bloomberg.
    https://meduza .io /en/news/2018/06/18/russian-oligarch-who-bought-real-estate-from-trump-in-shady-2008-deal-has-allegedly-invested-half-billion-dollars-in-u-s-biotech

    [Readers should use extra caution when opening Meduza links. / ~Rayne]

    • cue says:

       

      Opioid treatment implant-maker Braeburn secretly funded advocacy group fronted by Gingrich

      March 7, 2017 By Sarah Faulkner

      Opioid treatment implant-maker Braeburn Pharmaceuticals said in a regulatory filing last month that it has made charitable donations to an advocacy group fronted by Newt Gingrich and Patrick Kennedy known as Advocates for Opioid Recovery. The group lobbies for more government funding and insurance coverage for opioid maintenance treatments.

      Former Republican House speaker Gingrich and former congressman Kennedy are paid advisors to the group, making appearances on Fox News and in the New Yorker. Last week, Gingrich told Stat that he didn’t know who was funding the advocacy group and the nonprofit’s officials refused to disclose its investors.

      The Princeton, N.J.-based company’s filing revealed that Braeburn inked a funding agreement with the nonprofit through its private equity fund, Apple Tree Partners. Braeburn wrote that it agreed to make a $900,000 charitable donation to Advocates for Opioid Recovery and that it has paid $675,000 as of Sept. 30.

      Apple Tree Partners also backs CleanState Addiction Treatment Centers. Kennedy has served as a member of the board of directors for CleanState since 2015, according to Stat.

       

       

       

    • cue says:

      Opioid treatment implant-maker Braeburn secretly funded advocacy group fronted by Gingrich

      Opioid treatment implant-maker Braeburn Pharmaceuticals said in a regulatory filing last month that it has made charitable donations to an advocacy group fronted by Newt Gingrich and Patrick Kennedy known as Advocates for Opioid Recovery. The group lobbies for more government funding and insurance coverage for opioid maintenance treatments.

      Former Republican House speaker Gingrich and former congressman Kennedy are paid advisors to the group, making appearances on Fox News and in the New Yorker. Last week, Gingrich told Stat that he didn’t know who was funding the advocacy group and the nonprofit’s officials refused to disclose its investors.

      The Princeton, N.J.-based company’s filing revealed that Braeburn inked a funding agreement with the nonprofit through its private equity fund, Apple Tree Partners. Braeburn wrote that it agreed to make a $900,000 charitable donation to Advocates for Opioid Recovery and that it has paid $675,000 as of Sept. 30.

      Apple Tree Partners also backs CleanState Addiction Treatment Centers. Kennedy has served as a member of the board of directors for CleanState since 2015, according to Stat.

      Additional embedded links at the original article.

  4. Bob Conyers says:

    In my reading of the initial Washington Post article, I don’t see any indication that the reporters pushed Stone for any other texts, or even tried to see if the four texts quoted were the entire thread, or if he truncated it in order to sell his case.

    In an article about an obvious liar being caught in a lie, it’s odd to me that they wouldn’t do more to show how they tried to establish his reliability. Obviously Stone wouldn’t admit to anything else, but you would think they would try to have him held accountable for more lies if any more evidence emerges.

    Another interesting bit from the Post article:

    “Later, in text messages to a Post reporter, Greenberg changed his story, acknowledging that he’d met with Stone and providing a skeletal account of the encounter that matched Stone’s in some ways. Unprompted, Greenberg used essentially the same language as Stone to describe Stone’s reaction: “Trump will never pay for anything.””

    You have to wonder if Stone, Caputo and Greenberg have been coordinating, and if so, how. And of course, whether Mueller knows it now.

  5. Willis Warren says:

    if he didn’t commit any crimes, they wouldn’t need to know. This is pretty obvious. I know it’s making you salivate thinking about Stone going to prison for life

  6. orionATL says:

    this source was cited in jenifer rubin’s column today (6/18/18) in the washington:

    https://themoscowproject.org/explainers/trumps-russia-cover-up-by-the-numbers-70-contacts-with-russia-linked-operatives/

    the shear size of the total of meetings – 70 in all – is astonishing and offers unambiguous evidence of both plan and permission from the trump campaign for individuals connected to the campaign to meet with russians to influence the 2016 presidential election.

    “unambiguous evidence of both plan and permission from the trump campaign for individuals connected to the campaign to meet with russians” unless..

    unless it was some cadre in the republican party hierarchy who encouraged/authorized the contacts.

    here is rubin’s column which attacks trey gowdy’s feigned ignorance of trump/russian cooperation by claiming “no collusion” between the two:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/06/18/republicans-continue-to-play-clueless-on-the-russia-investigation/?

    • orionATL says:

      looks like it was 80 rather than 70 contacts, including 23 meetings. here is the summary paragraph from the moscow project cited above:

      “… Yet over the past year, we’ve learned about a series of meetings and contacts between individuals linked to the Russian government and Trump’s campaign and transition team. In total, we have learned of 80 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia linked operatives, including at least 23 meetings. And we know that at least 24 high-ranking campaign officials and Trump advisors were aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition. None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities. Instead, the Trump team tried to cover up every single one of them.

      Why were there so many meetings? What was discussed in them? More importantly, why did Trump and his camp lie about them, including to federal law enforcement? What are they hiding?… ”

      again i emphasize the shear volumn of contacts as near proof of intentional cooperation

  7. orionATL says:

    here is an article by phillip bump from today’s washington post k6/18/18):

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/06/18/at-least-six-people-close-to-trump-almost-certainly-knew-about-offers-from-russians-of-dirt-on-clinton/?

    reading this gave me an idea:

    “… Some important context: By March 2016, both Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s email and the Democratic National Committee’s network had been compromised by hackers believed to be working for Russian intelligence agencies. Reports suggest that the first access of the DNC’s network occurred in summer 2015, the hack of Podesta’s account in mid-March and the DNC network was compromised again in April. By April, then, Russians had a cache of information stolen from the DNC and Clinton’s campaign chairman….”.

    what if one hypothesizes that in mid-march 2016 there was a major agreement reached between the trump campaign and thexrusdian government orcits agents to help the campaign?

    then, persuant to this general agreement, in mid-march and again in mid-april dem documents were stolen by the russians. it happens that manafort joined the campaign in mid-march and sessions may have made a contact then (though not so sure yet).

    after that, one might hypothesize, all succeeding actions occurre with this general agreement in mind, including sgreements with cambridge analytica thru brexit brits and thence the russians.

    absurd? i wouldn’t bet on that.

    unlikely? i don’t know enough to say.

    intriguing? to me, yes.

    • Rusharuse says:

      The big secret that must be kept is -Trump is not rich, he is “ruble rich”. To have known publicly that he is afloat courtesy of Russian dark money would destroy his fragile psyche. Putin knows this, all else follows.

  8. David Sanger says:

    Marcy, do you think Mueller is waiting to see how it plays out with Manafort first  before moving to indict Stone?

  9. SpaceLifeForm says:

    Smells like Money Laundering.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tax-abbvie/how-us-tax-reform-rewards-companies-that-shift-profit-to-tax-havens-idUSKBN1JE12Q

    Despite recording over half its $28.2 billion in 2017 sales in the United States and basing most of its research facilities there, the suburban Chicago company has never reported a profit in its home country, its annual reports show.

    In 2017, AbbVie reported foreign earnings before income tax of $10.4 billion on international revenue of only $9.97 billion.

    [Nice trick]

    Yet, between 2013 and 2016 AbbVie had to pay around $1 billion a year of taxes in the United States, when it took the profits reported by foreign subsidiaries home to help cover expenses from its U.S. operations.

  10. x174 says:

    mt–

    thanks for staying focused on the never-ending web of russian contacts in the trump maladministration.

    just a thought: it seems that the trump-miller-sessions-nielsen heart-breaking immigration outrage had completely occluded news of the development of the investigation surrounding trump et al.’s associations with pro-putin russian oligarchs et al.

    but here’s the thing: if the trump maladministration really is stoking up this bonfire of insanities regarding separated families to obfuscate from the latest developments in the mueller probe, which has been his wont all along, it seems incredibly ironic that this unconscionable ploy may enable the democrats to take both the senate and the house in november because of the immense hatred that trump has unleashed as a result of these obviously inhumane policies.

    thus, due to trump’s habitual reflexivity to blow things up to distract from his and his family’s criminal enterprises, he may be setting himself and his family (and the Republican Party) up for a big, self-inflicted fall come november.

    • NorskieFlamethrower says:

      Sorry but I don’t think that the neo-Nazis believe that there will be open, free and fair elections this Fall and why would they? I’ve been on the ground here in Wisconsin and the Dems are dominating every district both federal and state and there hasn’t been a sound from the Rethugs. No I think the real story about this Fall’s election is whether or not the fix is already in or whether there will in fact be elections.

      • palli says:

        OH, there can always be elections because there is always ballot tabulation fraud. We haven’t stopped it yet in the places where it is known but officially unacknowledged.  (planes fall from the sky)

  11. Mitch Neher says:

    A few days ago, emptywheel argued that Concord Management wanted to find out how they got caught so that they could go back, Jack, do it again without getting caught the next time around. But I don’t think that Trump can go there with his old ratfucking crew. They’re all in the cross-hairs of the special counsel’s investigation–even Trump Jr. and Kushner.

    So, unless there’s an inexhaustible supply of fresh ratfuckers lined up three deep around the block at Trump Tower waiting for a chance to be hired for Trump’s 2020 Keep America Great campaign (an admitted possibility), then Trump would have to run for reelection with a crew of squeaky-clean newbies–no ratfuckers allowed. I doubt that Trump can work with any crew other than a ratfucking crew. And I doubt that Trump can get reelected with a crew of squeaky-clean newbies.

    Maybe Trump will be removed from office before he decides not to seek reelection.

    • Trip says:

      Does CA count?

      Trump 2020 campaign working with former Cambridge Analytica staffers
      The AP confirmed that at least four former Cambridge Analytica employees are affiliated with Data Propria, a new company specializing in voter and consumer targeting work similar to Cambridge Analytica’s efforts before its collapse. The company’s former head of product, Matt Oczkowski, leads the new firm, which also includes Cambridge Analytica’s former chief data scientist…The AP learned of Data Propria’s role in Trump’s reelection effort as a result of conversations held with political contacts and prospective clients in recent weeks by Oczkowski. In one such conversation, which took place in a public place and was overheard by two AP reporters, Oczkowski said he and Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, were “doing the president’s work for 2020.”

      http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-pol-trump-2020-20180615-story.html

      • orionATL says:

        thanks, trip. i was almost certain the ca guys would come back in a new guise, and they did just that. they didn’t even wait a decent time for mourning.

        that ca disbanded and some of its remnants came back under a new name to work for crooked donald and crooked rnc makes this new entity worth watching closely.

  12. Mitch Neher says:

    Unfortunately, yes, Trip. Former CA staffers count as ratfucker holdovers. Well . . . At least AP is on to them ahead of time. One wonders how well our glorious IC will perform going forward into 2020. No more IC complacency. Please?

  13. NorskieFlamethrower says:

    I’m afraid that we’re now down to brown-shirted poll watchers with weapons at this fall’s elections. The corruption of our communications infrastructure is complete, the next step is to create intimidation and chaos with local cops shutting down polling places

    • SpaceLifeForm says:

      No. Wont happen.

      Hang in there. It’s always darkest before the dawn.

      Dawn happens before polls open.

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