Opinion: This week I was interviewed on Newsmax, Real America’s Voice, and by multiple print outlets on the disparity between the manner in which I was arrested and the fact that James Comey hasn’t even turned himself in yet, for which he has a deadline of October 9.
Remember that Comey and I were both charged with essentially the exact same crime: lying under oath to Congress and obstruction of an official proceeding. Critics point out that I was also charged with witness tampering, but the evidence of that – an email in which I threatened to take a government witness Randy Credico’s dog – was nonsense because Judge Amy Berman Jackson would not allow my attorneys to enter into evidence a series of emails in which I expressed concern that Credico was not feeding his dog, opting to spend his money on drugs instead. Damn clever, that Andrew Weissmann.
The over-the-top raid on my home at 6 o’clock in the morning, given my lack of any previous criminal record and the fact that I did not have a valid passport and did not own a firearm, was a raid that cost US taxpayers $1.1 million and was completely unnecessary in a first-time nonviolent crime. A defendant’s lawyer would normally be informed that his client was being indicted and would simply turn him in at a prearranged time and place.
The FBI claimed I had to be arrested in a stunning made-for-television stunt—29 heavily armed agents in full SWAT gear, brandishing fully automatic assault weapons, storming my home for the benefit of CNN. They justified this early-morning raid by saying I was a flight risk, a claim completely disproved when I was released after arraignment with no cash bond just five hours later. Their other excuse, that I might destroy evidence, was equally absurd: after literally tearing my home apart in a 13-hour search, they found nothing that was ever used against me at trial.
Although CNN won an award from the White House Correspondents’ Association for their “incisive investigative reporting,” which led them to stake out my home in the pre-dawn hours of the day of my arrest, in fact they got a tip. I was arrested at 6:06 AM, and at 6:22 Sara Murray of CNN texted my attorney Grant Smith a copy of the draft of my criminal indictment, which was sealed until 10:30 that morning by a DC Magistrate. Although the document had no court markings or timestamp on it, the metadata tags for the document revealed the name of the man who wrote it, and therefore the man who leaked it: Andrew Weissmann. The leak of the draft of grand jury materials or an arrest or search warrant prior to it being executed is a felony under 18 U.S.C.S. 401(c).
My case also differs greatly from James Comey in that Judge Amy Berman Jackson placed a broad gag order on me, claiming that my public comments defending myself could “taint the jury pool,” a claim for which she never produced any evidence. Why then did Judge Amy Berman Jackson leave the order in place, which even unconstitutionally prevented my wife and other members of my family from defending me in any public forum, in place after I was convicted, prior to my being sentenced, and even after I was sentenced while awaiting incarceration?
My critics have argued that I was gagged because I posted an image of Judge Amy Berman Jackson in one of my legal defense fund solicitations online that depicted a rifle crosshair over the judge’s face. This is entirely untrue. The sentencing recommendation also accused me of “threatening to kill a federal judge.” This was also false.
In fact, on February 18, 2019, I posted a graphic of Judge Amy Berman Jackson on my Instagram feed that had, in the upper left corner, the logo of the organization that created it: “Corruption Central.” Someone at BuzzFeed who has never held a rifle with a scope in his or her life decided that the logo looked like a “crosshair on a rifle” and then accused me of “threatening to kill the judge.” This false narrative took off like a rocket in a fake media tempest.
Lost in the immediate fake news feeding frenzy is the fact that this same logo appears in the same place on other images of individuals “Corruption Central” had publicly criticized, including Mark Zuckerberg and Kamala Harris.
Even the affidavit I obtained from the graphic artist who had designed the microscopically tiny image in the upper-left-hand corner of a photo of Judge Amy Berman Jackson, and who insisted it was based on a Celtic cross and was a logo of an ongoing “Corruption Central” series that had published many such images, would not quell the firestorm. By the time the fake news media conflagration was over, this story became “Roger Stone posted a picture of the judge with crosshairs over her face,” which is entirely untrue.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered the US Marshals to conduct an investigation as to whether I had threatened to kill her, and they came back empty-handed. Nonetheless, the prosecutors in my case demanded additional jail time based on this claim in their sentencing memorandum, despite the fact that I was neither charged nor convicted of any such crime.
My Instagram post did, however, expose Mueller’s legal trickery to ensure that I was tried before Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who had already viciously violated the constitutional rights of Paul Manafort by incarcerating him in solitary confinement long before he had ever been convicted of any crime.
Editor’s Note: For more of this column, click here for Roger Stone’s Web Site.