As I'm sure you know, Roger Stone was arrested Friday morning.
Roger Stone, a confidant of President Donald Trump, was arrested in the special counsel’s Russia investigation in a pre-dawn raid at his Florida home on Friday and was charged with lying to Congress and obstructing the probe....
The indictment does not charge Stone with conspiring with WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website that published the emails, or with the Russian officers Mueller says hacked them. Instead, it accuses him of witness tampering, obstruction and false statements about his interactions related to WikiLeaks’ release. Some of those false statements were made to the House intelligence committee, according to the indictment.
Which means that, at Fox & Friends, this isn't really an indictment at all, because Stone is charged with "process crimes," which totally aren't crimes at all. ("Just process crimes" has been a favorite right-wing talking point for a few months now.)
Steve Doocy shrieks "Where is the Russia collusion?" in this clip, and "But there is no Russia collusion" in the one below:
In this second clip, Dan Bongino says:
Couple of takeaways from this: As you just accurately stated, this is another process crime, where the Mueller investigation -- the result of the investigation has produced the crime. As a result of the investigation, we have this witness -- alleged witness tampering and failure to produce documents.
Oh, is that all? Stone didn't cooperate? Aren't these the same people who in other circumstances demand unquestioning respect for law enforcement? When a black man winds up dead in a ditch after being pulled over for a busted taillight, aren't these the folks who say it's the dead man's fault because when the cops stop you, you should do everything you're ordered to do?
More from Bongino:
There is no evidence of a predicate crime outside of the investigation itself.
Right -- there's more smoke than in a California forest during a statewide emergency, but there's no fire.
Secondly, what leaps out to me here is, Roger Stone is no flight risk at all. He's one of the most recognizable people in this entire investigation. Why would you hit his door at six o'clock in the morning to arrest him with the FBI and not allow him to turn himself in?
Seriously? Roger Stone isn't a flight risk? You can't imagine this guy disappearing and turning up some island that has no U.S. extradition treaty, lounging on the beach with a pina colada in his hand? I think border agents would help sneak him out of the country just knowing he's a loyal Trumper. He's recognizable to politics junkies, but he's not George freaking Clooney -- most of America has no idea what he looks like. And he's such a couture-loving fop that all he'd have to do is put on a gray hoodie and a pair of dad jeans and even people who know what he looks like wouldn't recognize him.
Well, the answer, I think is pretty obvious. We've seen this with Mueller before. Whenever there's some major revelation about the corruption involved in the initiation of this case -- which happened last night on this network, with the Catherine Herridge report -- next thing you know, Mueller, magically, the next day, something happens.
Yes, they really believe this. Last night, Fox "Chief Intelligence correspondent" Catherine Herridge had the eighty thousandth right-wing story intended to discredit the Russia investigation by invoking the Christopher Steele dossier, which, on the right, is believed to be utterly fake. It appears under two headlines at the Fox site: "New Questions Over Role Anti-Trump Dossier Played in Securing Carter Page Surveillance Warrant" and "Investigators Had '50/50' Chance of Securing FISA Warrant for Trump Aide without Dossier: Testimony."
As far as I can tell, this report didn't even go viral on the right -- yet Bongino is insisting that Mueller coordinated an entire FBI raid between last evening's Fox prime time and six this morning just to distract America from this devastating non-viral story.
Nuts. Absolutely nuts. But at least a third of America believes this is the gospel truth.
Crossposted at No More Mr. Nice Blog
