Devin Nunes: 'Process of discovery' in Roger Stone case will be 'fascinating'

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation team is scraping "the bottom of the barrel" by indicting longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone while also predicting that the "process of discovery" in the case will be a "fascinating" one. Last week a grand jury indicted Stone on seven counts of lying to Congress, witness tampering, and obstructing a congressional inquiry — stemming from his interview with the House Intelligence Committee in September 2017 as part of its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Stone has said he will plead not guilty and while he has indicated a willingness to cooperate with Mueller, claims he will not testify against President Trump. During an interview on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures," Nunes said Mueller's prosecutors were "embarrassed" to seek help from GOP investigators who already determined there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

"I think the Mueller investigation is really at the bottom of the barrel when they're looking at people like this because we already found in our report that Roger Stone wasn't colluding with the Russians, which that was the original intent of all this, remember?" Nunes told host Maria Bartiromo. "Supposedly Trump campaign operatives, so-called, were colluding with Russians," Nunes added. "They must be embarrassed that they actually have to come to House Republicans in order to have us give them the information, the transcripts so that they go and get Roger Stone on a process foul that occurred in 2017 that Roger Stone himself is going to fight. The process of discovery is going to be fascinating in this case and I can't wait to watch it."

Before the Democrats took command of the House, the intelligence panel voted late last year to release Stone's transcript to Mueller's team. The House Intelligence Committee concluded in April of last year that there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. However, Democrats on the panel, led by now-Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., argued that probe has ended prematurely.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/devin-nunes-process-of-discovery-in-roger-stone-case-will-be-fascinating

Byron York: On closer examination, Roger Stone indictment is less than it seems

There are two sides to special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of longtime Trump associate Roger Stone. On one side there are the under-oath statements Stone made to the House Intelligence Committee that Mueller says are false. On the other, there are the Stone statements Mueller did not challenge. The testimony for which Stone was indicted concerns his descriptions of dealings with two men — Jerome Corsi and Randy Credico — who Stone used to attempt to get in touch with WikiLeaks head Julian Assange in the summer and fall of 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, when WikiLeaks published hacked emails relating to Hillary Clinton. Some of Mueller's charges seem somewhat small; for example, Stone was charged with lying because he said he and Credico communicated by phone but not by email when in fact, according to Mueller, they communicated by both phone and email. But in each case, Mueller says Stone knowingly made false statements.

On the other hand, the indictment does not accuse Stone of lying in some key instances when he defended himself against some of the most serious allegations of the Trump-Russia matter. Remember the media frenzy over Stone's August 2016 tweet that it would soon be "the Podesta's time in the barrel"? Remember Stone's tweets with Guccifer 2.0? And remember his claim, "I dined with my new pal Julian Assange last night"? House investigators asked Stone many questions about those topics, which Stone answered. Mueller did not charge Stone with lying about those issues, or with any illegal underlying behavior, either.

First, a warning: It is impossible for the public to fully evaluate the Stone indictment. It is based entirely on Stone's testimony to the Intelligence Committee, which took place on Sept. 26, 2017. There is, of course, a transcript of that testimony. It would be useful for anyone trying to understand the Stone case to read the transcript. It should already be public, because the committee voted unanimously last September to release it and other interview transcripts. But before actually releasing the documents, the committee sent them to the Director of National Intelligence for clearance, on the slight chance that they contained classified information. (The Stone interview was conducted in a nonclassified setting and concerned nonclassified events.) The DNI has had the Stone transcript for months, far longer than necessary to do a routine clearance. Yet it has not cleared the transcript for release, which means Stone's testimony remains largely secret.

The Stone indictment, of course, contains snippets of the transcript. (The committee gave the transcript to Mueller.) But it is an indictment — a one-sided accusation — not a balanced picture of Stone's entire testimony. Still, even though the whole transcript remains under wraps, some passages from it have been published, which can give us at least a hint of what Stone said. The two places to find excerpts of Stone's testimony are the Intelligence Committee's Trump-Russia report, entitled "Report on Russian Active Measures," published by majority Republicans on March 22, 2018, and the Democratic response, published on March 26, 2018.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-on-closer-examination-roger-stone-indictment-is-less-than-it-seems