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Thursday, May 3, 2018

Now It's Roger Stone??

In a sign that the media is running out of stories, yet another NBC news source is reporting that the Mueller probe is focused intently now on Roger Stone.  That's right, Roger Stone.  And according to the story from "knowledgeable sources", the key is the relationship between Roger Stone and Rick Gates.  Really?  Are they kidding with this crap?  I can't tell you much about the inner workings of the Trump campaign.  I can tell you, however, that Roger Stone and Rick Gates are not a conduit for collusion between the Russians and the campaign.  Stone is a guy who seems incapable of ever keeping anything secret.  He talks and talks and talks and then he talks some more. At least, it sure seems that way.  If there really were some communication channel between the Russians and the Trump campaign (which there wasn't), it seems pretty clear that it wouldn't consist of Roger Stone talking to anyone.

In just the last twelve hours, NBC reported that that knowledgeable sources confirmed that the FBI had tapes of conversations involving Michael Cohen including one with the White House.  Then the network issued a correction which basically said "Oops!"  It seems that there are no such tapes.  All the FBI has is the metadata from Cohen's phones.  In other words, they got the numbers he called or received calls from and the duration of those calls.  Think about that for a minute.  It means that if Cohen's calls are anything like those most people receive, the FBI has a list of 14 calls from Windows services to tell Cohen that his computer is giving our warnings that it is infected with a virus; 21 calls from Rachel at Cardholders' Services to report that he can now get lower interest rates; a batch of calls from something called Visa/MasterCard (I don't know what those calls say as I hang up rapidly), 16 calls from local police groups that claim to be holding circuses for handicapped children (you have to wonder if they hold so many circuses that they run out of handicapped kids to attend.)  There could be a few calls also from relatives and maybe some others from real estate brokers who want to know if he wants to sell his house.  In any event, NBC got the entire story wrong and had to retract it despite its coming from those "knowledgeable sources".

Let me put it this way:  I don't think the FBI or Mueller is concentrating on Roger Stone.  They have better things to do.  The guy was always tangential and always seemed to be more than a bit of a strange duck.  Actually, I think that if the President wanted to collude with the Russians he would be more likely use his then ten - year - old son Barron as the go between than Roger Stone.

Fake News is rapidly turning into Preposterous News.

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