Thickly but not well enough
Amanda Marcotte comments on the Roger Stone video that “The Beat with Ari Melber” on MSNBC has been reporting on this week. The show ran excerpts of video of Stone shot by Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen for “A Storm Foretold.”
The clips provide further proof that the Trump plot to overturn the election did not arise from a “sincere” belief that the election was “stolen.”
Marcotte writes:
The video captures Stone’s aggravation at finding he’s been barred from speaking at Trump’s January 6th “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse in Washington D.C.
“I don’t understand how they want us to lead the march but can’t even tell us where to go,” Stone whines, adding that he’s not speaking directly to Rudy Giuliani or the rest of Trump’s inner circle. He complains that it’s “very clear that I was never on their list.”
“It’s just childish and it’s amateurish. That’s why they lost. They don’t know what they’re doing,” he snipes.
Here is the clip:
Marcotte, however, focuses on Stone’s comments that contradict the narrative that the Jan. 6 march to the Capitol was spontaneous:
On MSNBC and elsewhere, the coverage has been focused on Stone’s admission that Trump lost, adding to the already large pile of evidence that Trump and his co-conspirators never believed the Big Lie. But what struck me in that clip is the part right before it, where Stone indicates he’s expected to “lead the march” but that the team directly around Trump has gone incommunicado. Despite Stone’s claims that this is “amateurish,” it actually suggests Trump and his lawyers were being quite savvy. Cutting off contact in the days before the riot means no traceable communications between them and the people who were going to storm the Capitol that day.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the various investigations into January 6 is nailing down Trump’s role in the violence. On one hand, it’s obvious that the riot was integral to Trump’s “fake electors” plot. He and his co-conspirators wanted to exploit the chaos to argue for substituting fake votes for real ones. He behaved all day like he expected it and his public communications, while draped in plausible deniability, also communicated his expectations of violence to his followers. Plus, as White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified during the House hearings about January 6, Trump seemed to have planned to join up with the rioters, and was only thwarted by Secret Service not driving him to the Capitol as he demanded.
On the other hand, no one has turned up any evidence that Trump directly communicated his wishes for a violent insurrection to groups like the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers, who took it upon themselves to lead the charge. All the evidence shows is him riling people up with speeches and tweets, and simply trusting his followers would know what he wanted. Alas, without that direct communication, special prosecutor Jack Smith can’t make insurrection charges stick in court, which is likely why he’s avoided filing them.
A lifetime of avoiding writing things down, of not using email, of speaking in code, and of keeping his inner circle small served to keep Trump out of jail. But he courted disaster in seeking the White House: too many courtiers.
Even then, Trump managed to insulate himself behind layers of intermediaries, especially between himself and those planning to assault the Capitol. “That way, if the insurrection failed, he could plead ignorance of the riot’s planning,” Marcotte suggests.
So rather than charge Trump with insurrection, Smith had to Eliot-Ness a Trump indictment on “conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.“
This Stone video is some of the best evidence yet that Trump and his gang both knew that the Capitol riot was coming, but also that they couldn’t risk directly communicating with the people leading the charge. As Stone’s comments indicate, the downside of this “no direct communication” policy was that Trump and his legal team were taking a gamble, hoping that Trump’s followers could take a hint. Unfortunately, it seems that their big bet worked out in most ways. The rioters obviously picked up what Trump was putting down and didn’t need explicit commands. Trump has been able to muddy the waters around the question of his responsibility for the riot, to the point where he can’t be charged for inciting it, even though we all know that’s what he did. And so far, he’s been able to keep questions about his eligibility to run at bay, though hopefully this effort to legally bar him will gain momentum.
Meaning, these efforts:
They may yet keep Trump from running in 2024. But they’ll cue up yet another constitutional crisis for us to weather, former federal judge J. Michael Luttig told MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace on Tuesday. May we be successful.