This morning Roger J. Stone was charged with by the Special Council’s team with seven counts including obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements and witness tampering. According to the indictment “A senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 (Wikileaks) had regarding the Clinton campaign. Stone thereafter told the Trump campaign about potential future releases of damaging information by Organization #1.” It goes on to say that between June and July of 2016 Stone told “senior Trump campaign officials” were told about the stolen emails in WikiLeaks.

The indictment raises several major questions:  Who is the “Senior Trump Campaign Official”?  Who directed the “Senior Trump Campaign Official” to contact Stone? And why was Stone not indicted for collusion because when that is what the indictment was all about?

Much of the media speculation about the identity of “Senior Trump Campaign Official” centers about Trump himself.  Stone has been a longtime informal adviser to Trump.  Stone was quoted as saying that he and Trump have had a “close relationship – both personal and political/professional — since the 1980s.”  Several times the president has gone out his way to praise Stone for refusing to testify against him while drawing a contrast with several other close associates who have cooperated with Mueller’s team.  Why did Trump think that it was so important that Stone not cooperate with Mueller?  Is it because Stone could implicate Trump himself?

However, there is one phrase of the indictment, “A senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact Stone . . .”, which indicates to me that Trump himself is not the “Senior Trump Campaign Official” in the indictment.  Certainly Trump himself would not be “directed” by someone else in the campaign to contact Stone.  The person who directed the campaign official would have had to be senior to the person being directed.  Some media sources are speculating that the person directed to contact Stone was Steve Bannon. Emails between Bannon and Stone communicating about the stolen Wikileaks emails have already come to light and Bannon was interviewed by Mueller’s investigators, and as far as we know Bannon doesn’t seem to be a target of the investigation.

But that doesn’t get the Trump off of the hook.  The more pertinent question is, who directed “a senior Trump Campaign official,” to contact Stone?  That could only be someone higher in the campaign hierarchy than that senior campaign official which is an apt description of the candidate himself.  If that is the case, that would go a long way in answering the third question, why was Stone not indicted for collusion when collusion between the Trump campaign and Wikileaks was what Stone was facilitating?

Remember that Mueller’s team didn’t have to charge Stone with every crime they know he committed. They could still indict him for collusion with a foreign entity to affect our election with hacked emails at a later date. The Special Prosecutor’s office could well be delaying charging Stone with that far more serious crime in order to hold that over his head to get him to cooperate at long last.  Or, even more likely, Mueller’s team is just not ready yet to reveal all of the evidence they have gather against Trump and his campaign which might have to be revealed in such an indictment.

Stay tuned.

Cajun      1/25/2019