President Trump tweeted in defense of his longtime political adviser Roger Stone, saying that his guilty verdict was thanks to a ‘double standard.’
‘So they now convict Roger Stone of lying and want to jail him for many years to come,’ Trump wrote. ‘Well, what about Crooked Hillary, Comey, Strzok, Page, McCabe, Brennan, Clapper, Shifty Schiff, Ohr & Nellie, Steele & all of the others, including even Mueller himself? Didn’t they lie?’
‘A double standard like never seen before in the history of our Country?’
Stone faces years in federal jail after he was found guilty today of lying to Congress about his efforts to procure stolen Democratic Party emails from WikiLeaks to help Donald Trump become President.
Roger Stone is photographed leaving court Friday after a jury delivered a guilty verdict on all counts
President Trump vented over the Roger Stone verdict using Twitter, naming a number of Democrats who should be locked up in his place
Jurors agreed the self-proclaimed political dirty trickster told five ‘whoppers’ when he testified before members of House Intelligence Committee investigating Russian collusion in the 2016 election.
Stone lied about the identity of his ‘back channel’ to WikiLeaks and lied when he denied asking its founder Julian Assange for the plundered messages.
He lied about his conversations with senior Trump Campaign officials and lied to lawmakers when he said he had no emails or written communications about WikiLeaks that could prove useful to their probe.
The smooth-talking agent provocateur was found guilty of seven charges in all: five counts of making false statements to Congress and single counts of obstructing a congressional proceeding and witness tampering.
The tampering referred to his effort to bully the comedian and radio host Randy Credico into pleading the Fifth so he would avoid contradicting Stone’s sworn September 26, 2017 testimony.
Stone had told lawmakers that Credico was his ‘back channel’ to WikiLeaks when it was actually the conspiracy theorist and author Jerome Corsi.
The 67-year-old defendant arrived at court Friday as he had done throughout the trial, dressed immaculately in a sharp pinstripe suit and arm in arm with his second Nydia Bertran Stone.
Perhaps hoping for a miracle, Stone was also clutching a bible in his left hand.
He showed barely a flicker of emotion as he stood, his left hand in his pocket, as jurors returned their unanimous guilty verdicts at 11:44am on the second day of deliberations.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton seemed to accuse President Trump of a crime, after House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff said that Trump tweeting about Marie Yovanovitch during her testimony amounted to ‘witness intimidation’
When he returns for sentencing Stone faces a maximum sentence of 50 years – 20 years for obstruction and five years apiece for the lying and witness tampering charges.
In his tweets, Trump went after Hillary Clinton, his 2016 political rival, as well as a number of individuals tasked with investigating his campaign’s ties to Russia.
He referenced Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who eventually took over the investigation, after former FBI Director James Comey was fired by Trump.
The president also named FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
He name-dropped his so-called ‘deep state’ critics, including former CIA Director John Brennan and ex-DNI Chief James Clapper.
‘May your downfall be swift, your penalty onerous, & your legacy condemned by all,’ Brennan tweeted Friday during the impeachment hearing.
In Trump’s tweet he brought up Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent tasked with compiling the dirty dossier, as well as Bruce and Nellie Ohr who were connected to it.
And he took on ‘Shifty Schiff,’ the nickname Trump gave to the California Democrat leading this week’s impeachment hearings.
Trump’s tweets come after he inserted himself into Friday’s impeachment proceedings, complaining that former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was bad at her job – and he had every right to fire her.
‘Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,’ he wrote. ‘She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him.’
This got the president accused of ‘witness intimidation in real time’ by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff.
Coming full circle, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – Trump’s 2016 opponent – chimed in, accusing the president of a crime.
‘Witness intimidation is a crime, no matter who does it. Full stop,’ Clinton tweeted Frdiay.