Longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone, like so many of the President’s aides, friends, staffers, and former employees, just can’t help himself. He worked with Trump for a very simple reason — because like attracts like, and people who crave the limelight are naturally drawn to figures like Trump.
But unlike, say, a Sean Spicer or an Anthony Scaramucci — who now can’t stop trying to ride the coattails of the fleeting fame they achieved as part of the President’s entourage, Stone has more in common with the former manager of the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort. They just can’t stop committing crimes.
It has less to do with self-enrichment than the crimes that Republicans on the House Oversight Committee keep helpfully reminding everyone that Michael Cohen committed, though, and more to do with maintaining the elaborate web of lies and deception that not just one potential crime hinges on, but their entire framework — their whole lives.
In other words, everybody is a “coffee boy” compared to the likes of Roger Stone, who has been a political operative for decades and a professional liar since he could speak. He is a criminal through and through.
Now he’s in trouble again.
After Stone was indicted for his part in the Trump-Russia affair, his public actions were so outrageous that the presiding judge issued a gag order to keep Stone from publicly commenting on the case — on penalty of jail — after Stone posted an inflammatory photo of the judge on social media next to the crosshairs of a gun sight.
But Roger Stone, who was watching the Cohen testimony on Wednesday morning like everyone else politically-minded in America, just couldn’t stop himself from commenting after Cohen brought him up during his Wednesday testimony.
Cohen testified that at one point Trump put Roger Stone on speakerphone in his office and that Stone announced that he’d just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks who told him about a “massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”
When Cohen said that, Stone, watching remotely, sent a text message to BuzzFeed News that said in its entirety,
Mr. Cohen’s statement is not true.”
Whether it is or is not true, it certainly is a violation of the gag order. We can’t help but wonder how long it will be before Stone is remanded into custody.
Featured image via screen capture
