"These are the kind of comments that might provoke some judges to issue a gag order.... Trump is likely trying to provoke a legal battle so he can portray himself as a victim of censorship ...

"... as well as government abuse.... He wants that to be the narrative, to fundraise and make himself the victim. Smart judges avoid unnecessary fights and don’t want to be trolled." 

Said Ken White, "a former federal prosecutor who... cited the case of longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone, who in 2019 was ordered not to post about his own charges on social media after demonstrating what a federal judge called 'middle-school behavior' online that could influence potential jurors."

Quoted in "Trump’s outbursts met with silence so far by prosecutor, judge/Other defendants might get in trouble for publicly calling the prosecutor a deranged drug user. Not Donald Trump" (WaPo).

"In the final months of his life, when it was clear that he wouldn’t recover, Atwater lamented the dirty, divisive campaigns he’d run, and apologized far and wide for them."

"His memoir calls on politicians to instead follow the Golden Rule. Roger Stone, who formed an early consulting and lobbying firm in the Washington area with Atwater, along with Paul Manafort and Charles Black, remains unconvinced about Atwater’s spiritual awakening. 'Lee was a great storyteller,' Stone told me in a recent interview. 'But, in the end, he was just grasping at straws. The Atwater family disagrees and has no doubt that he became a Christian. But at that point he was also Buddhist, Hindu, and everything else.'... In Stone’s view, however, Atwater was more of an opportunist. 'We both knew he believed in nothing,' Stone told me. 'Above all, he was incredibly competitive. But I had the feeling that he sold his soul to the devil, and the devil took it.'"

Writes Jane Mayer in "The Secret Papers of Lee Atwater, Who Invented the Scurrilous Tactics That Trump Normalized/An infamous Republican political operative’s unpublished memoir shows how the Party came to embrace lies, racial fearmongering, and winning at any cost" (The New Yorker).

Gah! Why don't I have a "Lee Atwater" tag? I have about 10 old posts with his name. I'll bet every time I thought something like: No, he's a secondary character from a bygone age, not likely to come up enough to deserve his own tag. Meanwhile, I've got hundreds of tags for individual names that I've only used once. Atwater comes up a lot because his name is synonymous with "dirty tricks" and because he supposedly regretted it all when he came face to face with Death.

So that explains why I'm blogging this snippet from The New Yorker: It casts doubt on the deathbed conversion story. But it's just Roger Stone. We never actually believe Roger Stone. Then again, does it matter? Does it matter that a man regrets his evil deeds when he's no longer in a position to benefit from them? He took all his advantages when it worked in his favor, but he tells you to follow the Golden Rule. What's the basis for believing him?

FROM THE EMAIL: Richard writes: 

You can watch the sunset of news stories at Mememorandum River.

Memeorandum is my favorite place to find news stories to blog. It displays them according to some mysterious automatic process that reflects what people are talking about. You get the headline with a link, then the names of places that are discussing it — including Althouse, sometimes — all linked.

For example, right now, the top of the page is dominated by the story that Michael Bloomberg is going to spend $100 million to benefit Joe Biden. (Rich people have a right to spend their own money to say whatever they want to say. It's not a contribution, so there is and can be no limit on the amount spent.) That story pushed down what was dominating a little earlier today, the headline "Roger Stone calls for Trump to seize total power if he loses the election."

I don't know if Stone really said that, but I also don't care what Roger Stone says. I'm satisfied to see that story sink, and it made me wonder: What about Woodward? Is he still getting talked about, what with that new book of his and something he heard Trump say last winter, something about Trump knowing Covid-19 was going to be terrible but wanting also to inspire optimism. I searched the Memeorandum front page. Woodward was gone.

Now, a nice thing about Memeorandum is that you can click to reformat it as Memeorandum River. In the River format, the stories that appear on the main page are simply in chronological order. So you see the date and time that a much-discussed article first appeared on Memeorandum. There were lots of stories about the new Woodward book. It was a big deal last week. Has it slipped out of active discussion already? With Memeorandum River, I can see the last time there was anything new. It was 12:10 p.m. on September 11th: "Senate Republicans scramble to contain fallout from Woodward bombshell" (The Hill). Well! I guess the "fallout" is contained. The Hill had collected some bland statements by Republicans. Stuff like: "I just wonder whose vote will be changed by a Bob Woodward book."

In the a.m. of September 11th, there were 3 stories:

9:25 AM Wall Street Journal: Woodward's Non-Revelation — There's no need for the tell-all books. Trump tells us every day...
9:07 AM Howard Kurtz / Fox News: Why Trump talked, though he feared an ‘atrocious’ book from Woodward...
7:25 AM CNN: Vulnerable Republicans avoid criticizing Trump after admission to Woodward about downplaying virus

I won't bother to make links. You can see the story dying in those headlines.

When did the Woodward story begin?, you may wonder. The River answers that question: September 9th. Last Wednesday. Such a bombshell that day! Remember? It lasted 3 days. You can see it rise and fall over at the River.

"It’s the diet version of the N-word, but as an African-American man, it’s something I deal with pretty frequently."

"If there’s a takeaway from the conversation, it is that Roger Stone gave an unvarnished look into what is in the heart of many Americans today."

Said Morris W. O’Kelly (of radio's "Mo’Kelly Show"), quoted in "Roger Stone Uses Racial Slur on Radio Show/Mr. Stone, while being questioned about the commutation of his sentence by President Trump, used a racial slur in referring to his interviewer, who is Black" (NYT).

The "diet version of the N-word" is "Negro," and Stone, in the middle of talking to O'Kelly, muttered something to the side. The beginning of the sentence was hard to make out, but it ended with "arguing with this Negro."

When Mr. O’Kelly asked him to repeat what he said, Mr. Stone let out a sigh, then remained silent for almost 40 seconds. Acting as if the connection had been severed, Mr. Stone vehemently denied that he used the slur. “I did not, you’re out of your mind,” Mr. Stone told the host.

Afterwards, O'Kelly said: “The only thing that I felt was true, honest and sincere that Roger Stone said was in that moment that he thought I was not listening. All of my professional accolades, all my professional bona fides went out the window because as far as he was concerned, he was talking and arguing with a Negro.”

Stone is ludicrously dishonest here. And no one should take solace in the fact that "Negro" was once the polite term. For background, read "When Did the Word Negro Become Taboo?," a 2010 Slate article dealing with a newly released statement Senator Harry Reid had made before the 2008 election, saying Barack Obama could win  because he was "light skinned" and had "no Negro dialect." That was 10 years ago, and people were calling on Reid to resign. I remember when "colored people" was the polite term (and so does the NAACP).

But it hardly even matters here, because even if Stone had muttered "arguing with this black man" or "arguing with this African-American man,"it would have been offensive. Do the interview, answer the questions. If you have a valid reason to object to the interviewer, go ahead and say it, but if your objection is that he's black, you're horribly wrong. Saying "arguing with this black man" is in the category of remarks like "It's like arguing with a 2-year-old" or "It's like talking to a wall." It's disrespectful even if the source of your irritation is not the race of your interlocutor. Add race, and it's a cruel insult. Make the racial word different from the normal words that decent people use in public speech, and you make yourself a pariah.

Stone paused for 40 seconds and denied that he said it. He knew it was wrong. If he knew it was wrong, and it's so obviously wrong, why did he say it? It's his secret thought but it just slipped out, because he lacks brain/mouth control? Or did he actually really want to hurt O'Kelly?

"Roger Stone is a victim of the Russia Hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump Presidency."

So reads the official White House statement about the commutation of the Stone sentence. I know — from my very slight dabbling in radio and TV news last night and this morning — that this issue is getting talked to death. It's the outrage of the day, blotting out whatever was the outrage of the day before, and soon to be blotted out by the next outrage. So I don't think my time is well used listening to any of that. If I know they're talking, I already know what they are saying — more or less. But I do think it's worth looking at the details of what the White House put in an official statement in this case. Most official statements are in bland officialese, though it can be interesting to try to read between the lines or just to translate it into plain English.

But this official statement is written in the style of Trump's rally rhetoric. Let's continue (the boldface is mine):

"President Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. on seven felony crimes on Friday..."

"... according to the White House, using the power of his office to help a former campaign adviser days before Mr. Stone was to report to a federal prison to serve a 40-month term. Mr. Stone, 67, a longtime Republican operative convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, has been openly lobbying for clemency, maintaining that he could die in prison and emphasizing that he had stayed loyal to the president rather than help investigators. 'He knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him,' Mr. Stone told the journalist Howard Fineman on Friday before the announcement. 'It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.' Mr. Trump has long argued that Mr. Stone was persecuted and lashed out at the prosecutors, the judge and even the jury forewoman in his case. The real villains, he argued, were former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., whom he has falsely accused of spying on his campaign, as well as the people who investigated his associates, including the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey."

The NYT reports.

“Wearing sunglasses and a dark fedora, Stone... strode past a giant inflatable rat dressed as Trump with a red tie and yellow hair - a common prop in street protests - and a sign calling for his pardon.”

From a Reuter’s article about the Roger Stone sentencing, happening now.

UPDATE:  3 years!

AND: I've said it before and I can say it again: "I happened to be wearing a fedora when I ran across that." (Reason for wearing a fedora while blogging explained at that link.)

ALSO: From the NYT write-up:

Judge Amy Berman Jackson excoriated Mr. Stone, saying his behavior inspired “dismay and disgust”.... She said that for months, Mr. Stone carried out a deliberate and calculated effort to hinder an important congressional inquiry by blatantly lying, hiding hundreds of documents and pressuring a fragile witness. Mr. Stone enjoys “mind games” and political gamesmanship, she said, but “nothing about this case was a joke. It wasn’t a stunt and it wasn’t a prank.”

She added, “He was not prosecuted to give anyone a political advantage. He was not prosecuted, as some have complained, for standing up for the president. He was prosecuted for covering up for the president.”...

Are people understanding Barr's "impossible for me to do my job"?

I'm tired of reading all the articles about it. Or, more accurately, I'm averse to reading much of anything about it. But I do assume that Barr is helping Trump. Deliberately, of course.

“I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody….whether it’s Congress, newspaper editorial boards, or the president," Bill Barr tells @ABC News.

"I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.” https://t.co/14rnEMD65c pic.twitter.com/QuoTgpUVHp

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) February 13, 2020

"In [Roger] Stone’s case, the guidelines worked a severe result. In tampering cases, a guidelines enhancement calls for a drastic increase in the sentence..."

"... if the defendant threatened the witness with physical injury. This drove Stone’s 'offense level' from 21 to 29 on the guidelines grid, so even though he is a first offender... his recommended sentence zoomed to 90 to 108 months — instead of 37 to 46 months....  [T]he prosecutors’ submission was an accurate (if extreme and unyielding) rendition of federal sentencing law....[T]he president went bonkers on Twitter upon learning of the recommendation... [but] the DOJ and the White House have had no communications about the case.... Late Tuesday, the DOJ filed a revised sentencing memo, which does not recommend a specific sentence but strongly suggests that a term calculated without the eight-point enhancement — i.e., between 37 and 46 months’ imprisonment — would be just. The new memo concedes that the prosecutors’ calculation in the original memo was 'arguably' correct, but contends that it would be unreasonable under the circumstances... But for his connection to Trump, Stone would never have been pursued in a collusion fever dream that Mueller’s prosecutors knew was bogus when they charged him. Yet his crimes, while exaggerated, were real. He was convicted by a jury... though he could be spared by the judge....  If President Trump is afraid, in an election year, to take the political hit that a pardon for Stone would entail... he should bite his tongue.... The Justice Department’s job is to process cases, including Mueller cases, pursuant to law. If the president wants to make those cases disappear, he has to do it himself and be accountable."

Clear analysis from Andrew C. McCarthy in "The Roger Stone Sentencing Fiasco." (National Review).

Retweeted by President Trump, who is himself older than 67 and deserves no special mercy on account of his age.

A *9 year* prison recommendation for non-violent crimes committed by a 67-year-old man. https://t.co/9w7IUa2f09

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) February 10, 2020

I agree that the recommended sentence is ridiculously harsh, but not because us people in our 60s deserve extra compassion.

Why am I giving this post my "Trump pardons" tag? The more vindictive the prosecution looks, the easier it seems for Trump to do what we expect him to do.

Pardon Roger Stone?

Did Roger Stone just get convicted of lying and witness tampering to spare the President of the United States from the impact of a witch hunt?

Easiest pardon ever.

I'd bet on this one. #PardonRogerStone

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) November 16, 2019

ADDED: After yesterday's tweet, defending himself as Yovanovich was testifying against him, Trump attracted accusations that he was intimidating future witnesses. Wouldn't pardoning Stone be the other side of that coin — demonstrating to all potential witnesses against him that good things lie ahead if you stick to Trump's side?

"I am ashamed that I chose to take part in concealing Mr. Trump’s illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience."

"I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat. He was a presidential candidate who knew that Roger Stone was talking with Julian Assange about a WikiLeaks drop of Democratic National Committee emails."

From the PDF of Michael Cohen's opening statement to the House Oversight Committee.

You can watch the action live here.

I just got email from Roger Stone with the subject line "about my arrest...".

It reads:

Friend,

I pleaded NOT GUILTY today. I intend to fight until the bitter end to expose the corruption of the Special Counsel and the Democrats.

I'm sure that you have heard about the FBI's pre-dawn raid on my Florida home and subsequent arrest. Backed by 29 FBI agents in full tactical gear and televised by CNN, Robert Mueller has sought to label me as guilty before innocent.
From the start of this "investigation," I have been completely cooperative with Congress and chose to offer my voluntary testimony about the 2016 presidential campaign. Had the Office of the Special Counsel requested that I turn myself in, I would have gladly done so.

Steve Martin as Roger Stone on last night's "SNL" cold open.

Fantastic, hilarious performance.

And though Steve Martin never appears again in the show (except at the curtain call), we felt that he must have contributed to the show in other ways, because the whole thing seemed to be on a better, higher level than has become the norm.

Meade was especially amused by "I Love My Dog":



In other rap-related sweetness, I enjoyed this tribute to Manhattan's Upper East Side:

"[Roger] Stone, a self-described dirty trickster who began his career as a campaign aide for Richard M. Nixon and has a tattoo of Nixon on his back..."

"... has long maintained that he had no connection to Russia’s attempts to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. He sometimes seemed to taunt American law enforcement agencies, daring them to find hard evidence to link him to the Russian meddling campaign. His brash behavior made him less of a subject of news media scrutiny than other current and former aides to President Trump — like the character in a whodunit who readers immediately dismiss as too obvious to have committed the crime. But the special counsel’s investigators spent months encircling Mr. Stone...."

From "Roger Stone, Adviser to Trump, Is Indicted in Mueller Investigation" (NYT).

I looked back in my archive to see if I'd ever written about Roger Stone. I see I wrote about Donald Trump firing him, which happened all the way back in August of 2015. The Trump campaign's statement about the firing was:

"We have a tremendously successful campaign and Roger wanted to use the campaign for his own personal publicity. He has had a number of articles about him recently and Mr. Trump wants to keep the focus of the campaign on how to Make America Great Again."

At the time, I wrote:

So "Roger wanted to use the campaign for his own personal publicity," that's the kick in the ass the campaign wants to give to a man who sought a somewhat graceful exit? Well, then, give it to us Roger. Use your moment in the sun and dish the dirt on Donald.

Or... perhaps one of the better candidates is reaching out for Stone.  There are so many candidates, and perhaps Stone is good enough to feel the demand. I don't remember his name, but I see he's been around a while. Here's a Politico article from just before the debate: "Donald Trump’s debate ‘dirty trickster’/Roger Stone is just one of many behind-the-scenes figures to influence the GOP debate." That does have a whiff of Roger-is-using-the-campaign-for-his-own-personal-publicity about it.

Whether game-changing moments emerge on camera and how they play online will depend on a cast of lesser-known characters who have shaped the rules of the forum, worked to influence what the moderators and debaters say on stage, prepped the candidates and have their finger on the button of the social media conversation.

Stone is perhaps the most important of them. He got his start in big-time politics as a college student on Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President, and he publicly embraces his image as a dirty trickster, including cooperating with a 2008 New Yorker profile by Jeffrey Toobin titled, “the Dirty Trickster.”

In the profile, Trump calls his once and future adviser a “stone-cold loser” and suggests Eliot Spitzer should have sued Stone for a stunt in which the operative allegedly called Spitzer’s aged father, claimed the elder Spitzer was being investigated for loans made to his son’s political campaigns, and threatened him with arrest if he refused to cooperate with an imaginary subpoena. He has a tattoo of Nixon’s face on his back.

Is Stone taking my 3-year-old advice and finding a new moment in the sun where he can dish the dirt on Donald?

ADDED: I see that a few days before the 2016 election, in a post titled "Did Donald Trump become a candidate for President because his friend Bill Clinton urged him to do it?", I quoted this from Maureen Dowd:

Roger Stone, author of “The Clintons’ War on Women” and a longtime confidant of Trump’s, claims that Bill urged Trump to get in the race and told him he thought he could get the nomination. “That’s why the people with the tinfoil hats are convinced the whole thing is a setup,” Stone says. “Bill can’t help himself from giving advice. He loves the game. He’s the great kibitzer.”

"No, I don't care what they say... They have a President... What is he at 38%?... if Roger and me were in there, Trump would be at 55%..."

"So whatever they want to say they can say whatever they want about me, I don't care. Once again, I would say, they're doing a terrible job for him. And they've been doing terrible job since he's been alive... I would once again say that Sarah Huckabee is a terrible press officer. That Trump has a 38% approval rating. That the Republicans are going to lose the House in the midterms and that's a fact. And they can say whatever they want about me. They've treated Roger [Stone] and me terribly. Now, Roger won't say that."

That's Sam Nunberg, responding to Erin Burnett's confronting him with the opinion that some people think he's "drunk or off your meds." Here's the whole transcript. Here's the 30-minute video, which I didn't get 3 minutes into without needing to retreat to the transcript because I need to avert my eyes from someone who seems to be drunk or off his meds.



Maybe you find this sort of thing entertaining or creepily satisfying. I can see that the media have gone wild for Sam Nunberg in the last 24 hours. Do I need to pay attention to this rather than to something else? I can see this is a circus and he's a clown, but why must we go to the circus? It this the only show in town?

“While today is an important victory and an important vindication, the road is far from over, the proper war is just commencing."

“The claim by the UK that it has a right to arrest me for seeking asylum in a case where there have been no charges is simply untenable.”

Said Julian Assange, quoted in The Guardian.

On what happens next, Assange signalled that he would remain inside the embassy for the time being, and that he was seeking dialogue with British and US officials...

... The UK refuses to confirm or deny at this stage whether a US extradition warrant is in the UK territory. While there have been extremely threatening remarks made [in the US]. I’m always happy to engage in a dialogue with the Department of Justice about what has occurred.

What are the "extremely threatening remarks"? Here's another Guardian piece, "Trump and Assange's friendship may come to a quick halt as US charges loom/The president and WikiLeaks founder were partners not more than four months ago, but now the US may charge him for publishing classified material":

A threat by the Donald Trump administration last month to imprison WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange might, from Assange’s perspective, seem ungrateful.

It was WikiLeaks that published a steady drip of awkward emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman in the run-up to the November election. It was WikiLeaks that exposed plotting inside the Democratic National Committee to ruin the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. And it was WikiLeaks that Trump associates such as Roger Stone touted as the force that would finish off Clinton.

“I love WikiLeaks,” Trump himself said at a Pennsylvania rally a month before the election, brandishing a printout of a Clinton campaign email, to cheers from the crowd.

Why should Trump act grateful? He needs to look independent, not like he was in collusion or encouraging the law-breaking. Bursting out with "I love Wikileaks" at a rally may show how little Trump thought in terms of law, but it's not taking a legal position, just exulting at something that was producing a result that was helping him. 

Did Donald Trump become a candidate for President because his friend Bill Clinton urged him to do it?

Maureen Dowd digs into the story in "When Hillary and Donald Were Friends":

The Washington Post quoted four Trump allies and one Clinton associate as saying that [Bill] Clinton encouraged Trump’s efforts to play a larger role in the Republican Party.

Roger Stone, author of “The Clintons’ War on Women” and a longtime confidant of Trump’s, claims that Bill urged Trump to get in the race and told him he thought he could get the nomination. “That’s why the people with the tinfoil hats are convinced the whole thing is a setup,” Stone says. “Bill can’t help himself from giving advice. He loves the game. He’s the great kibitzer.” Stone said Trump also asked Bill three years ago if anyone could be elected president as an independent, and Bill told him no.

I tried to get to the bottom of this murky story that day [last summer] at Trump Tower, but when you’re dealing with Bill and Donald and truth, it’s an elusive goal.

“Did Bill tell you that you should run?” I asked.

“He didn’t say one way or the other,” Trump replied, over a plate of meatballs.

Ronald Reagan was "so smooth, so effective a performer” that “only now, seven years later, are people beginning to question whether there’s anything beneath that smile."

Wrote Donald Trump in "The Art of the Deal," and "Trump launched a political campaign that tore into Reagan’s record, including his willingness to stand up to the Soviet Union," Politico pointed out in an article last fall called "When Donald Trump Hated Ronald Reagan/The GOP front-runner praises the conservative icon now, but in 1987 Trump blasted Reagan and his team":

Advised by the notorious Roger Stone, a Nixon-era GOP trickster, in 1987 Trump took out full-page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post blasting Reagan and his team. In the text, which was addressed “To the American people,” Trump declared, “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.” The problem was America’s leading role in defending democracy, which had been fulfilled by Republicans and Democrats all the way back to FDR....

It's a day to think about the smooth rough, effective performer and what lies beneath that smile scowl.

"Mr. Trump fired [his top political adviser] Roger Stone last night."

"We have a tremendously successful campaign and Roger wanted to use the campaign for his own personal publicity. He has had a number of articles about him recently and Mr. Trump wants to keep the focus of the campaign on how to Make America Great Again."

CNN quotes the Donald Trump campaign, then gives us this from Stone, who says he wasn't fired, he quit:

"Unfortunately, the current controversies involving personalities and provocative media fights have reached such a high volume that it has distracted attention from your platform and overwhelmed your core message. With this current direction of the candidacy, I no longer can remain involved in your campaign... I care about you as a friend and wish you well. Be assured I will continue to be vocal and active in the national debate to ensure our nation does not again turn to the failed and distrusted Bush/Clinton families."

So "Roger wanted to use the campaign for his own personal publicity," that's the kick in the ass the campaign wants to give to a man who sought a somewhat graceful exit? Well, then, give it to us Roger. Use your moment in the sun and dish the dirt on Donald.

Or... perhaps one of the better candidates is reaching out for Stone.  There are so many candidates, and perhaps Stone is good enough to feel the demand. I don't remember his name, but I see he's been around a while. Here's a Politico article from just before the debate: "Donald Trump’s debate ‘dirty trickster’/Roger Stone is just one of many behind-the-scenes figures to influence the GOP debate." That does have a whiff of Roger-is-using-the-campaign-for-his-own-personal-publicity about it.

Whether game-changing moments emerge on camera and how they play online will depend on a cast of lesser-known characters who have shaped the rules of the forum, worked to influence what the moderators and debaters say on stage, prepped the candidates and have their finger on the button of the social media conversation.

Stone is perhaps the most important of them. He got his start in big-time politics as a college student on Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President, and he publicly embraces his image as a dirty trickster, including cooperating with a 2008 New Yorker profile by Jeffrey Toobin titled, “the Dirty Trickster.”

In the profile, Trump calls his once and future adviser a “stone-cold loser” and suggests Eliot Spitzer should have sued Stone for a stunt in which the operative allegedly called Spitzer’s aged father, claimed the elder Spitzer was being investigated for loans made to his son’s political campaigns, and threatened him with arrest if he refused to cooperate with an imaginary subpoena. He has a tattoo of Nixon’s face on his back.

ADDED: