Soon, sooner rather than later, a post there is due. Otherwise what would readers think? "Nothing to see there" via silence often by its nature shouts something. There is a pattern jury instruction about circumstantial evidence being as sound as direct evidence. A parallel term should be in use: circumstantial silence. As evidence of something, silence can be golden. Look what it got Stone. (Epstein should have been so lucky - silence with him was less than golden for him, but his silence surely was important to somebody.)
Perhaps the comment I left with the St. Cloud GOP blogger will not survive moderation. It was a bit off point to the post ragging on something or other, so it might be thought to be trolling.
In any event, the Stone thing has DWT posting. Derisively, of all things. DWT posts of the wonder that Republicans are saying little to nothing at all of Stone's windfall. Title, "Shutting Roger Stone Up With A Commutation Of His Sentence-- Few Republican Elected Officials Seem To Mind." That thread got the thought going here, to wonder if the GOP voice out of St. Cloud will maintain silence too.
Wait and see is the cliche, so we'll do so.
Romney, gearing up for 2024, shows up via a tweet memorialized in the DWT post. Shocked, SHOCKED!
And Stone, himself? Anybody with a tattoo of Dick Nixon on his back can't be all bad. Perhaps that tattoo alone was grounds to commute the Barr-lightened sentence. Barr perhaps in overruling his prosecutors may have thought of the tattoo too. Or just Barr being compassionate, and then Trump wanting to go one better. From DWT:
#NeverTrumper Bill Kristof [sic, Kristol intended] wrote late Friday night that members of Congress shouldn't be mute about this outrage. "Democrats certainly will not be. But what of Republicans? Will they cower? Probably. Or will some-- a few, a happy few-- step forth now, in light of this extraordinarily corrupt exercise of presidential power, and say: No second term for this president. Will some elected Republicans make clear that Donald Trump’s America is not their America, not our America, nor the America of patriots, not the America of our future? A healthy Republican party would feature dozens of members of Congress stepping forward to say this... Republicans had their chance a few months ago to vote to impeach, and then convict, Donald Trump. With one (one!) honorable exception, they chose not to stand up for the rule of law. Now Trump has carried through on promises even Nixon never had the nerve or opportunity to carry out. Trump has gone further than Nixon ever did. Will no elected Republican now stand up and say to the president: You chose Stone; I choose Biden."
So is it a done deal? Have Trump and Stone gotten away with this (at least outside of the history books?) Well, where better to seek an answer than from Ben Wittes at Lawfare? He wrote that "the predictable nature of Trump’s action should not obscure its rank corruption. In fact, the predictability makes the commutation all the more corrupt, the capstone of an all-but-open attempt on the president’s part to obstruct justice in a self-protective fashion over a protracted period of time. That may sound like hyperbole, but it’s actually not. Trump publicly encouraged Stone not to cooperate with Robert Mueller’s investigation; he publicly dangled clemency as a reward for silence; and he has now delivered. The act is predictable precisely because the corrupt action is so naked. In a normal world, this pattern of conduct would constitute an almost prototypical impeachable offense. But this is not a normal world. Congress is unlikely to bestir itself to do anything about what Trump has done-- just as it has previously done nothing about the obstruction allegations detailed in the Mueller Report."
[Kristol link in original, no Whitte link given] I couldn't have said it better myself. (That's why a lot of posting here is by quotes.) DWT's own fleshing out thinking there:
Now, with Trump’s commutation, Stone has received the precise reward Trump dangled at the time his possible testimony was at issue.
“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,” the White House said Friday evening. In the White House’s telling, Stone was targeted by out-of-control Mueller prosecutors for mere “process” crimes when their “collusion delusion” fell apart. He was subject to needless humiliation in his arrest, and he did not get a fair trial. “[P]articularly in light of the egregious facts and circumstances surrounding his unfair prosecution, arrest, and trial, the President has determined to commute his sentence. Roger Stone has already suffered greatly. He was treated very unfairly, as were many others in this case. Roger Stone is now a free man!”
Indeed he is. But the story may not be over.
“Time to put Roger Stone in the grand jury to find out what he knows about Trump but would not tell. Commutation can’t stop that,” tweeted Andrew Weissman, one of Mueller’s top prosecutors, following the president’s action.
That’s most unlikely while the Justice Department remains in the hands of Attorney General Bill Barr. But it’s far from unthinkable should Trump leave office in January.
Enough. The general public reaction is tempered, outrage mostly absent, because we knew all along that Trump was going to pull the crony-dodging-jail lever for dutifully being silent about the boss's doings. False outrage, politically played, rings a bit hollow, (e.g., Mitt tweeting as DWT posted), since the thirty second hate ads to be on TV ramping up to the election in the key swing states will sing "Stone" as part of all the Trump crap you can squeeze into thirty seconds.
Choosing in such a context will be difficult - so little time, so much to say.
Ending things there, on a written soundbite [figure that out] would deny highlighting the Kristol post. First, great lead image. Then, opening text:
Of course Donald Trump would have preferred to wait until November 3 to commute Roger Stone’s sentence. But Stone had let it be known that he might talk if he had to set foot in prison for even a short time. And so he received his get out of jail card on July 10, four days before he was to report to the federal penitentiary.
Stone lied under oath, was convicted by a jury of his peers, was sentenced by a judge—and will never serve a day in prison.
Two days before this event, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman retired from the U.S. Army, under assault from Donald Trump and his supporters, with the prospect of an uncertain future in the Army because his superiors were not willing or able unambiguously to stand up to Donald Trump. So Trump’s desire for revenge against a military officer who had served his country honorably and who had testified truthfully, under oath, to Congress, went unchecked.
More after that in Kristol's post, so read it; and the Kristol sidebar invites reading. Last in noting Kristol's site, another written soundbite: Anyone who'd name a site "the bulwark" is asking for it, and making a dare.
___________UPDATE___________
An apology to readers for having to make a correction. Having only the Kristol link, and being unfamiliar with the site, it was presumed the site was Kristol's. WRONG.
Kristol was author of a single recent item among several the Bulwark published. After examining site content, Sarah Longwell is publisher of the site.