A jury has convicted the 67-year-old-frat boy who literally wears a motherfucking top hat of lying his ass off and obstructing the congressional investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 election.
It took a federal jury less than two days to find Roger Stone guilty of witness tampering, obstructing Congress and five counts of lying to Congress, according to CNN. Prosecutors argued that the “political consultant” and 17th-century Victorian magician made false statements to conceal the Trump campaign’s obsession with Hillary Clinton’s emails and Wikileaks, while Stone’s defense team countered that their carnival barker client didn’t mean to lie to lawmakers, so it shouldn’t count—a claim now being championed by a certain occupant of the White House.
The Washington Post reports:
Stone, in a blue suit, stood at the defense table with his left hand in his pants pocket, watching impassively as verdicts were read.
Stone had argued that he was not intentionally dishonest and that the cases was politically motivated. But jurors sided with prosecutors who said Stone obstructed the House efforts because the truth would be embarrassing to Donald Trump’s campaign.
Stone’s indictment was the last brought by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, putting on trial his slippery brand of political brawling and revealing important new details about the Trump campaign’s keen interest in computer files hacked by Russia and made public by WikiLeaks. He was accused of lying to Congress and tampering with a witness, an associate prosecutors said Stone threatened in a bid to prevent the man from cooperating with lawmakers.
Though prosecutors sought to prove only that Stone had lied to Congress, they asserted that his motive for the falsehoods was protecting Trump from embarrassment — and thus made the president and his campaign a key component in their case.
Arrested during an early morning raid in 2017, Stone apparently kept meticulous documents on Donald Trump’s obsession with Hillary Clinton’s emails. Prosecutors used phone call evidence, emails and text messages to prove that Stone served as a conduit between Wikileaks and the Trump campaign, a fact bolstered by testimony from Trump’s campaign managers, Paul Manafort and Steve Bannon. In the end, Stone’s attorneys conceded that the man who dressed like he was attending a wedding between the Easter Bunny and Abraham Lincoln lied, but they argue that there was a very good reason that Roger Stone shouldn’t go to jail:
Because he didn’t find shit on Hillary.
Stone’s case was one of the last for the team of federal prosecutors working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller on the Russia inquiry. They argued that Stone’s lies not only obstructed the congressional investigation, but they created a “blind spot” which made the House Intelligence Committee’s report inaccurate.