Posted on 01/30/2019 6:04:30 AM PST by Mariner
Roger Stone has long feared he would be slapped with a gag order if he got indicted — and he’s readied a plan to make sure he won’t have to stay silent.
The federal judge in Stone’s case, Amy Berman Jackson, has already hushed a coterie of others caught in special counsel Robert Mueller’s dragnet, including Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and their attorneys. They were quieted after one of the lawyers told reporters that Mueller’s case was “ridiculous.”
Jackson will have a much longer record of public commentary from Stone to work with when the longtime Donald Trump associate appears Friday afternoon for his first status hearing tied to the special counsel’s charges that he lied to Congress and obstructed the House’s investigation into Russian election meddling.
If Stone is gagged, his contingency plan is already in place. He’s got a well-known First Amendment attorney on his legal team who represented the rap group 2 Live Crew against obscenity charges in the early 1990s. And Stone has designated a pair of close friends as spokesmen in the event he and his lawyers are told to stop talking.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Hopefully Stone will fight it all the way to the USSC.
There is NEVER EVER a compelling public interest in gagging a defendant in a criminal case.
“I am told I have nothing to say”
This guy has balls! He reminds me of Martha Stewart, who after being sentenced to prison, stood on the steps of City Hall and asked folks to continue buying her books and products. I don’t care what anyone says about Stone, he’s got courage.
He was on Hannity’s radio show yesterday.
Sounds like he knew all this was coming and is prepared for the fight.
I don't know the actual legal arguments here, but I can't imagine how this would be constitutional. Innocent until proven guilty, so how can they suppress his freedom of speech and right to express and defend himself in this manner? Mueller and his merry band of thugs are making the Gestapo look like pikers.
Notice how every one of Mueller’s targets end up in front of a liberal hack Judge?
Democrats are evil scum.
Yes. I wonder if there are any conservative (or objective) judges left in the country.
This country is now a banana republic. I don’t know how we’ll ever get it back.
“Notice how every one of Mueller’s targets end up in front of a liberal hack Judge?”
AND under a Gag Order.
So as not to undermine the prosecutors case with the potential jury pool.
Well, he could claim to change parties and then he could do whatever he wants without consequences.
Ya. What’s up with that?
And violate it all along the way.
Shanlon Wu, a former attorney for Gates...warned it (talking outside the courtroom) could also tick off the judge. “Most criminal defense lawyers don’t want to antagonize the judge about something collateral,” Wu said.
So Shanlon Wu is implicitly warning that obama judge Deborah Robinson will NOT rule with dispassion and fairness, but will be retributive and vindictive. It looks like this judge is unfit to sit in judgement of any defendant.
My impression, just from a couple of minutes of the Hannity radio show chat....he’s known for at least two or three months that they were coming and likely had plenty of time to sanitize the house of material. He’s going to make this into a circus-court environment.
>>Notice how every one of Mueller’s targets end up in front of a liberal hack Judge?<<
Venue shopping. The oldest trick in the book. Up there with the oldest profession in the world.
I think Mueller has finally messed with the wrong guy.
This nation’s political prisoners are starting to mount up. I’d expect some of them to go the way of Bobby Sands soon. There isn’t much to lose when you’re in a cage for 23 hours a day.
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