Roger Stone is very sorry, everyone. He did not mean to suggest any kind of violence toward that judge who will be hearing his case, Amy Berman Jackson, who is also the judge who is about to sentence Paul Manafort in DC and who decided last week that Paul Manafort very intentionally lied and blew up his plea agreement, thereby opening the door for special counsel Robert Mueller to throw the book at Manafort, something Mueller seemed to revel in doing. It's also also the judge who, on Friday, issued a partial gag order on Stone's case, and more importantly, told Stone to stick his request for a new judge right up his ass.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves, so let's back up.
Monday afternoon, Roger Stone posted this on Instagram. Just a normal picture of a federal judge next to a logo that certainly appears to be crosshairs, not that Stone's batshit fans might get any sort of idea from that.
It's been deleted, so we're borrowing the screengrab from the New York Daily News. Beside the pic, Stone explained that "Deep State hitman" Robert Mueller had used "legal trickery" to make sure Berman Jackson would hear his case, when that couldn't be further from the truth. Rather, the case was assigned to her because it's related to United States v. Netyksho -- which, if you're keeping score of all the cases America has against Russians these days, is the one where Mueller indicted all those members of Russian intelligence for hacking and stealing emails from the Democrats, then laundering them through Russian intelligence front WikiLeaks at key times during the 2016 election.
Oh MAN, Stone and his lawyers did not like the suggestion that his case is related to Netyksho! Never mind that in that indictment, Mueller told the story of those Russian intelligence officers posing as a hacker persona called Guccifer 2.0 and ... talking to Roger Stone! So Stone and his counsel had a conniption and insisted Netyksho has nothing to do with Stone, and Mueller responded by dropping all the receipts he has (which is a lot) of why yes, Netyksho has EVERYTHING to do with Stone. As Law & Crime explains, one of the chief arguments Mueller brought is that Stone's very case arises directly from the very same search warrant that resulted in the Netyksho charges. As in, Mueller was following the hackers all the way back to Russian military intelligence, and once he got there, the goddamned place was full of T-shirts that said "ROGER STONE DID NOTHING WRONG." Late Friday afternoon, Berman Jackson agreed. (With Mueller, not the T-shirts.)
From Mueller's response:
The government related this case to the earlier indictment returned in United States v. Netyksho [...] against a different defendant that "arises from a common . . . search warrant" and from "activities which are a part of the same alleged criminal event or transaction." In particular, evidence in this case was found in accounts that were subject to search warrants executed in Netyksho. Moreover, the alleged obstructive conduct in this case was directed at a congressional investigation into conduct that formed the basis for the criminal charges in Netyksho. [...]
Evidence obtained from those search warrants resulted in the allegations that the Netyksho defendants hacked and stole documents for release through intermediaries, including Organization 1, and that Stone lied to a congressional committee investigating, among other things, the activities of Organization 1 regarding those stolen documents.
Later on:
[T]he criminal conduct alleged in Netyksho was a central focus of the congressional investigation that the defendant is alleged to have obstructed, and therefore the activities underlying the crimes charged in that case are part of the same activities underlying the crimes charged in this case. The defendant's false statements did not arise in a vacuum: they were made in the course of an investigation into possible links between Russian individuals (including the Netyksho defendants), individuals associated with the dumping of materials (including Organization 1), and U.S. persons (including the defendant).
Sounds like it's all the same case to us! Stone just happens to be charged with witness tampering, obstruction of justice and lying his fucking ass off to Congress so much, about things directly related to what the feds are prosecuting in Netyksho. It's not real fuckin' complicated, even if you didn't go to law school.
So now we are back to Roger Stone posting pics of Berman Jackson, who will still be handling his case, on Instagram, pics that kinda sorta seem like maybe Stone was suggesting one of his batshit bucktoothed fans go Pizzagate on her. Was he trying to get a full gag order? Does he want some more prison? Is he just REALLY trying to butter Amy Berman Jackson up?
Oh fiddlesticks, it is obviously above our pay grade to be trying to analyze the legal GENIUS of people associated with Donald J. Trump.
After it was brought to Stone's attention that, UM YEAH, THAT'S BAD, Stone changed the pic so it was just a close-up of Berman Jackson's face, without the crosshairs, and explained that it was merely a valid and normal human response, but that since the original pic was open to "miss interpretation," he decided to go ahead and change it. Also he blamed the intern. Or the coffee boy. Or the recreational proctologist! Anyway, it was not his fault:
Later on, he deleted it entirely, including the shitty caption, and replaced it with this:
And that thing we mentioned above about how Stone is sorry? He is very sorry. Like, SUPER sorry. Stone and his lawyers have now filed a document saying Stone VERY REGRETS posting a picture of the federal judge who's handling his case with a crosshairs next to her face in order to incite his QAnon dipshit followers to violence against the federal judge who's handling his case, can the federal judge who's handling his case find it in her heart to forgive him? (In the document, they spelled Instagram like "Instragram," because idiots.)
The point of this post is that Roger Stone's name is in the newspaper again, which is all that matters when you are a sad third-string ratfucker fixer loser with nothing to live for besides occasionally getting your name in the newspaper, and also your face looks like that and your head is shaped wrong.
The end.
UPDATE: Just as we published, this happened:
Oh boy. Judge Amy Berman Jackson doesn't seem happy with Roger Stone. https://t.co/jCS7QJ2X2T— Natasha Bertrand (@Natasha Bertrand) 1550590190.0
Defendant is ORDERED to show cause at a hearing to be held on Thursday, February 21, 2019 at 2:30 p.m., as to why the media contact order entered in this case and/or his conditions of release should not be modified or revoked in light of the posts on his Instagram account on or about February 18, 2019. Signed by Judge Amy Berman Jackson on 2/19/19.
APOLOGY NOT ACCEPTED.
[Law & Crime / New York Daily News]
Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE, DO IT RIGHT HERE!
Wonkette is ad-free and funded ONLY by YOU, our dear readers. Click below to keep the lights on, please. We appreciate you, most of the time.
