Tag Archive for: David Purdue

As far as I know, virtually no one else has accurately reported on the significance of this footnote in the Mueller Report, liberated by BuzzFeed hours before election day.

1279 Some of the factual uncertainties are the subject of ongoing investigations that have been referred by this Office to the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The footnote explains why, on March 22, 2019, the Mueller team had not yet charged Roger Stone for conspiring with Russian intelligence officers to steal files from Democrats that could be leaked to help Donald Trump get elected President: because DOJ was still investigating it. The footnote — and the entire public record since then — make it clear that that investigation into Stone on CFAA conspiracy charges was ongoing. Indeed, I have shown that the Stone trial for lying to Congress to cover up the identity of his claimed go-between with WikiLeaks strongly suggests that his go-between was neither Jerome Corsi nor Randy Credico, but Guccifer 2.0, quite possibly an American cut-out working with the Russians.

While there are signs that Bill Barr effectively shut down that ongoing investigation by forcing the four Stone prosecutors to withdraw from the case, an investigation into whether Stone conspired with Russia would neither be tolled nor precluded on double jeopardy grounds. Nor would such crimes be covered by Trump’s commutation of Stone’s sentence for covering up who his go-between with WikiLeaks was, which appears to have been an effort to distract from his ties directly to the Russian operation. They are entirely different crimes. To pardon Stone for conspiring with Russia, Trump might well have to specify that Stone did conspire with Russia, something that would not only create legal jeopardy for himself, but would require admitting what he has tried to deny for four straight years, that his campaign “colluded” — conspired even! — with Russia to win.

It would be uncontroversial for Joe Biden’s Attorney General to reopen a case against Roger Stone for conspiring with Russia.

That may be useful background to the news that, after remaining relatively quiet for much of the 2020 election (or at least fronted by Steve Bannon), Stone is now threatening to hold Georgia’s Senate seats — and with it, GOP control of the Senate — hostage.

Conservative operatives and a super PAC with ties to infamous GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone are calling for Trump supporters to punish Republicans by sitting out Georgia’s crucial Senate runoffs or writing in Trump’s name instead. And though their efforts remains on the party’s fringes, the trajectory of the movement has Republicans fearful that it could cost the GOP control of the Senate.

The most aggressive call to boycott or cast protest ballots in the two runoff races has, so far, come from a dormant pro-Trump super PAC with ties to Stone, which unveiled a new initiative to retaliate against the Republican Party’s supposed turncoats by handing Democrats control of the U.S. Senate.

The group, dubbed the Committee for American Sovereignty, unveiled a new website encouraging Georgia Republicans to write in Trump’s name in both of the upcoming Senate runoff elections, which could determine the party that controls the upper chamber during President-elect Joe Biden’s first two years in office. The PAC argued that doing so will show support for the president in addition to forcing Republicans to address the wild election-fraud conspiracy theories floated by Trump supporters and members of his own legal team.

The effort uses some of the same infrastructure that the Mueller team scrutinized as part of its investigation of Stone.

The Committee for American Sovereignty and a sister nonprofit group were set up in 2016 as vehicles for prominent pro-Trump operatives—most notably Stone and former Blackwater chief Erik Prince—to attempt to suppress the Black vote by amplifying claims that Bill Clinton had an illegitimate biracial son. It’s been mostly quiet since then. The PAC’s recent filings with the Federal Election Commission disclose nothing but outstanding federal and state tax liabilities, and its new effort in Georgia doesn’t appear to have received much pickup yet.

A request for comment sent to the Committee for American Sovereignty email address on file with the FEC was not returned. Efforts to reach Pamela Jensen, a California political activist who leads the group, were not successful. Her husband, an attorney named Paul Jensen who describes Stone as a “long time client,” told The Daily Beast in an email his wife “has no comment, and nor do I.” Stone did not respond to inquiries about his present involvement with the group.

Stone made fairly naked threats in the days leading up to Trump’s commutation of his sentence, in that case to share information with prosecutors about Trump’s knowledge of his 2016 activities. The threats worked. This time around, Trump may not have the power to respond to Stone’s threats.

But Stone has proven in the past he’s willing to take reckless actions when he is cornered.