Judging Freedom - Roger Stone - Sin of Omission, Jan 6th Hearings

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

Roger Stone - Sin of Omission, Jan 6th Hearings #january6thcommittee #jan6th #rogerstone #dems #TrumpSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, June 13, 2022. It's about 2.05 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. One of my favorite guests, and candidly, you all know this, a longtime boyhood friend of mine, Roger Stone, joins us today. Roger, it's always a pleasure. Welcome to my podcast, Judging Freedom. Judge, I'm always glad to be here. It's always fun. Thank you. So I've been watching, and I guess you have as well, the January 6th committee hearings. And of course, what impresses me right from the outset is that there's nobody there on the other side. There's no Republican team. There's no Republican investigators. There's

no Republican lawyers to cross-examine any of the witnesses. There's no Republican opening statements. I mean, this is the farthest thing from a fair examination of the culpability, if any, of Donald Trump that's imaginable. And yet a federal judge appointed by President Trump has found this a legitimately constituted committee, and that opinion was upheld by an appeals court. What are your thoughts as these committee hearings are fresh in your mind and mine and those watching and listening to us now? Well, as a non-lawyer, I'd have to start by saying that those two decisions are, as we like to say, wrongly decided. Secondarily, this isn't a hearing. It's a charade. It's kabuki theater. It's a one-sided orchestrated show. We have an ABC television producer producing this.

By the way, Goldstone is his name. Same guy who spiked the Jeffrey Epstein story at ABC. Gives you some idea of what kind of a journalist he is. No, this is a made for television epic. It's getting, by the way, terrible reviews, but it is, as you point out, much like the Senate Watergate hearings decades ago, it is a one-sided proceeding made for television. I think their greatest sin is the sin of omission. In other words, we saw the documentary filmmaker who followed the Proud Boys. Where is this footage of the cold-blooded first-degree murder of Ashley Babbitt, in which Capitol Hill police officer kills an unarmed woman in cold blood who isn't

menacing anyone and without warning? Where is the footage, which I've seen, which is really chilling, of the Capitol Hill officer bludgeoning Rosemary Boylan to death? Where is that footage? He has that footage, but the committee has chosen not to show it. So this is the last gasp at finding some reason to disqualify Donald Trump as a presidential contender in 2024. And the cherry on the top is Adam Schiff today, who says he has seen substantial evidence of criminal conduct by Trump. Does this sound familiar, by the way? That's exactly what he said about Russian collusion. Why this con man hasn't been investigated. The same guy who told us that Hunter Biden's laptop was disinformation directly from the Kremlin. The same Adam Schiff who got caught altering the text messages of White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The same Adam

Schiff who never came up with the goods in the Russian collusion hoax. Why anybody? ABC, of course, puts this guy front and center. He has no credibility. In other words, if it's Schiff, flush it. Only you could put it that way. And of course, he, just like everybody in the committee, has the speech and debate clause of the Constitution, which protects them from the type of rational, fair inquiries that you have just suggested ought to occur. And if you sued him because of what he said, the court would say, go vote against him or campaign against him. The speech and debate clause lets him say what he wants. I have a feeling that the committee's investigators are not nearly as potent or resolved as Department of Justice investigators.

If the DOJ wants to indict Trump, which in my view would be a colossal, monumental, historical error, it doesn't need anything from the committee in order to do it. And I think the committee knows that. I think this is just the use of governmental funds as sort of a campaign for the Democrats to get people's minds off of inflation, off of $6 a gallon for gas, so that they're not thinking about that come November. Well, first of all, gas is closer to $7 a gallon, just to correct you there. And going to aid- You think gas is cheaper in New Jersey than in Florida? Well, except for we at least get to pump our own, which of course you don't.

It is, no, I think that's part of it. But what I really think it is, is the Democrats seeking desperately to cobble together some kind of a plausible case that they can then hand off to the Department of Justice. Here's how the world works. It's very sick. It doesn't matter how false or disingenuous or ridiculous that idea may be. Once it reaches critical mass on Twitter, I'll give you an example. Roger Stone colluded with the Russians and WikiLeaks to assist in the election of Donald Trump. It becomes a trope. It becomes a factoid. Now, government prosecutors begin to believe it to be a fact for which they just need to find the proof. In other words, it's not find the proof and then establish it as a fact. It's the other way around. So the Democrats are trying

desperately to hand off some kind of a half-baked case to the DOJ. At the same time, the hearings put public pressure on DOJ to, quote unquote, hold Trump and his orbit, whatever that means, accountable. I've had to live with this now for months. In other words, it's the classic tactic of guilt by association. Yes, I know Donald Trump, and I speak to him occasionally. Yes, I know members of the Proud Boys. Yes, I came in contact with members of the Oath Keepers, all of which proves exactly nothing. All of which is constitutionally protected speech. Well, that's the other point. The argument that Trump's exhortations from the ellipse, in which he clearly, by the way way edited out last night by cnn says we are now will peacefully

peacefully gather or peacefully march and gather at the at the capital uh that was edited out of last night's special we had two blockbuster uh uh specials last night that were just fountains of disinformation and they're related one is a continuing multi-part series of John Dean's version of the Watergate saga, in which he is a heroic whistleblower, when in fact he is the man who conceived of, planned, pushed, lied about, and covered up the Watergate break-in, lied to Richard Nixon for nine straight months about it, and now repositions himself as the hero of Watergate. The man is a psychopath. Pleaded guilty and never spent a night in jail. Although he was disbarred, something he didn't mention when he was out making

lectures about ethics to various legal groups. But again, his narrative is just bolstered by CNN. And then in the middle of this special on Watergate, who pops up but Michael Cohen, the former counsel for Donald Trump, pointing out the similarities in the character flaws of Donald Trump and Richard Nixon. What does Michael Cohen know about Watergate? What does he know about anything, for that matter? I mean, the man's a buffoon and a liar, because I was there, at least party to some of the things that he makes reference to, where he has essentially turned on the president to try to save his own skin. Remember, he was found guilty of bank fraud, tax fraud, and other issues wholly unrelated in any way to Donald Trump. So then he became a witness against Trump. And then an extraordinary hatchet job on Alex Jones. Now, what does Alex Jones have to do with Watergate or Donald Trump? Well, he has everything to do with January 6th. So the subtitle of this Alex Jones documentary shown on CNN should have been

why the Justice Department must charge Alex Jones. Once again, there was no beef. In other words, it doesn't matter what you think about Alex Jones. You may like him, you may dislike him, you may discount him, but he has a First Amendment right to say whatever he wants. He is giving his political or cultural opinions. He's entitled to do that. Millions of people are entitled to tune in and watch and listen to him do that if they choose to do so. But if you watch him, you're denigrated as some kind of nut as opposed to just a discerning viewer who's entitled to listen and believe anything you choose to believe. And if you buy one of these supplements, good God, you must be a lunatic.

I have discussed and lauded you and Alex Jones for the manner in which you treated this committee as opposed to Peter Navarro, who we both know, who ended up getting shackled at an airport and dragged to a federal district court by FBI because he didn't invoke his Fifth Amendment rights. So when you were called before a committee that you and a lot of people believe is illegitimate, irrespective of how this judge ruled. You invoked your Fifth Amendment rights. Alex Jones did the same, and that was the end of it. Bauer, of course, thumbed his nose at the committee, and now he's facing an indictment. Do you know what the committee was going to ask you from the questions they attempted to ask you, and to which you quite properly invoked your right to remain silent? What did they want to know from

you? Well, they wanted to know about contacts that didn't happen. I mean, I have a pretty good idea what their questions are because I was before the committee for two hours and I invoked my Fifth Amendment rights repeatedly. Largely, it was, of course, a phishing expedition, but I fulfilled my legal obligations under the subpoena. Now, however, what I do find troubling, and I do agree with you that Navarro made a bad legal decision. I don't think Steve Bannon's argument of executive privilege is going to hold up when he goes to trial. I think he is ultimately going to trial in D.C. He has a very, very high probability of being convicted in a one-sided and biased proceeding. But I notice now that-

You have a jury similar to the one that you had. Well, that would be a jury of all Hillary Clinton cheerleaders and certified Trump haters. Here's what's more disturbing, Judge, and that is the government is already moving for a gag order on Peter Navarro. Now, where does it say in federal law that if you're charged with a crime, you forfeit your First Amendment right to defend yourself? Well, Roger, they impose that on you. And, you know, I ripped into her from pillar to post as the judge, as frequently as I could over that. And the same thing should happen to Navarro. Navarro's problems are he brings a lot of this on himself and he doesn't have a lawyer.

I agree with that. You have a team of lawyers and they still put a gag order on you. In retrospect, we should have appealed the gag order immediately and more aggressively. We did appeal it to the district court and it sat there for 180 days while I sustained damage. And then days before my trial, that court said, well, procedurally, this matter is not right for decision because Stone needed to ask the trial judge who put the gag order in place to remove it first, and then if she refused to do so, he could have come back to us, which is of course nonsense. Why would you ask the judge who put it in place to remove it? She wouldn't have done so. If I had to go through this again, I would have

been much more aggressive in challenging the gag order, but then- But the government loves to suppress speech that it hates and fears. That is the truth. But this is very, very weird. You would demolish their case before the public. And Navarro doesn't have your skills, but he's a tenacious guy made very well demolish the legitimacy of the committee before the public. And so therefore it wants to silence them. Too bad. Read the First Amendment. The government should have nothing whatsoever to do with the freedom

of speech, particularly on political matters. I am perplexed, however, as to why the over-the-top arrest of Navarro, yet no arrest of Dan Scavino or of Mark Meadows, who are also not pleading the Fifth or invoking their Fifth Amendment rights in the face of a subpoena. So I'm not certain what explains that unequal treatment under the law. I'll tell you what explains it. There are people that the government hates and fears. There wasn't an arrest in the modern era comparable to what Mueller and crew did to you because they hated you and feared you. And therefore, they should not have been the prosecutors in the case. If the prosecutor hates the defendant or the judge hates the defendant or a juror hates the defendant, they have no business being in the

case. Well, obviously I couldn't agree more. On November 3rd, 2020, by federal court order, the Department of Justice was forced to disgorge the last remaining long-hidden redacted section of Mueller's report, which he admitted that he had found, quote, no factual evidence, close quote, of Justice was forced to disgorge the last remaining long-hidden redacted section of Mueller's report when she admitted that he had found, quote, no factual evidence, close quote, against me regarding Russian collusion or WikiLeaks collaboration or the phishing and publication of John Podesta's emails. Therefore, I was convicted of lying about something that didn't happen. The judge said at sentencing, you have been convicted of lying to cover up for Donald Trump. Cover up what? There was nothing to cover up. The prosecutors never proved there was anything to cover up. And then, of course, in the sentencing phase of my

trial, they wanted to give me seven to nine years because of my involvement in, quote, foreign interference in the election, which, of course course I was not charged with nor convicted of. Now, the D.C. court system is an epically broken system. Nobody who is not a partisan Democrat will get a fair shake there. But even worse, no one in the media will cover what is really happening. So everybody pretends this is a legitimate process when, in fact, it is a deeply corrupted process. I think Bannon's going to be convicted, and I think he'll probably be sent to jail. I don't know why he didn't get the same advice that you and Alex Jones did. I think his efforts to subpoena Mrs. Pelosi are absurd.

The court's going to quash that subpoena as well as the subpoenas of the other members of the committee because right or wrong, the issue of the legitimacy of the committee has already been resolved. I also think that Merrick Garland is not Eric Holder. He's not the type of person to indict a former president, no matter what evidence the Democrats may send him. I think he understands the historical ramifications of doing that. What do you think? Well, on the first matter, I agree with you. I do think Steve Bannon's lawyer, David Schoen, is a particularly able lawyer.

Had my case gone to appeal, he would have represented me in appeal. He did represent me in the sentencing phase of my trial. He was on my show, The Stone Zone, which you can see at frankspeech.com, on Lindell TV2, every day at five o'clock Eastern, four o'clock Central. And he made a very compelling case for Bannon's refusal to testify. But it is a case that I believe will fall on deaf ears. So I agree with you. I think Bannon will be convicted. I'm not sure what happens to his show, The War Room. Actually, that was the name of my show at InfoWars until Steve ripped it off. I'm not sure what happens to his show. On the larger question, I have no idea what Merrick Garland will do. He did say that there was no effort by the Justice Department to declare that parents who objected to their children being taught certain curriculum

regarding race or gender would be viewed as domestic terrorists. And then, of course, documents surfaced that showed the exact opposite. Wait a minute. You're telling me an attorney general lied under oath? I never heard of that happening before. Well, that's the real irony. Of course, I was convicted of lying under oath to Congress.

Correct. What if Rod Rosenstein, by the way, he actually testified under oath after my conviction. No, I didn't approve the investigation into Roger Stone. Then, of course, I approved the scope memo of October 17th, 2018, which he did exactly that. Hillary Clinton lied under oath. Andrew McCabe lied under oath. James Comey lied under oath. James Clapper, the national security advisor, lied under oath. John Brennan, the Islamic convert CIA director, lied under oath. You see, we have a two-tier justice system. You can lie under oath over significant matters, material matters, if you are a Democrat. But if you're Roger Stone, you can make a

misstatement regarding something that is completely immaterial, irrelevant, even innocuous, and they will try to send you to prison. Who's on your show at five o'clock Eastern today? I have a terrific discussion with Roger Stone. I'm going to break down the Watergate thing because it needs to be done. This fictionalized version of Watergate in which Dean once again positions himself as a whistleblower, as a hero, has to be debunked piece by piece. And then, frankly, I'm going to do a review on the january 6 hearings so far which are i think omit more than they actually show uh the the the the the uh the blogosphere right now is a toxic sewer of hatred uh people screaming for my head when i know nothing about this by the way just one more time for old time's sake,

any claim, assertion, or even implication that I knew about, was involved in, or condoned any illegal action on January 6th at the Capitol, or at any other place on any other day, is categorically false. And there is no email, no encrypted message, no witness, no phone conversation, no text message that would prove otherwise. This is an outrageous but continuing guilt by association. Last question. I'm glad you said all that. Last question. If I can get John Dean to come on Judging Freedom, would you go toe to toe with him? Yes, but he would never do so because I would have to confront him about his wife's past as a prostitute, about the real reasons for the Watergate break-in. Again, last night he said outrageous claims that I knew advance about the break-in. He knew all about the break-in advance.

He paid for it. He paid for it. He paid for it. It was his idea. And most importantly, Judge, he lied to President Nixon for nine straight months about it, as revealed in the Watergate tapes. But then when he published his volume, which he said was complete and had every tape, he admitted the three key days in which he lied to Nixon and coached him about perjury. I would love to go toe-to-toe with him. He will never do that. He knows I have his number. There's a movie coming out called Trial on the Potomac in which I am privileged to provide commentary on the profoundly unethical

behavior of Leon Jaworski and crew of John Dean and of Judge Sirica himself. You know the folks who are putting this together because they're all friends, but the public should know that this dynamite is about to come out. Roger Stone, it is always a pleasure. Thank you very much. I'll watch you this afternoon at five. Judge, great to be with you. God bless you. Thank you. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Judge, great to be with you. God bless you. Thank you. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.