Rachel Maddow last night noted that there may be more indictments coming related to Roger Stone and Wikileaks, and that indictment very well could be the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr.
Said Maddow: “Under Justice Department rules, once a Grand Jury has indicted somebody, that Grand Jury is not allowed to keep collecting more evidence randomly about that person who they have already brought an indictment against….Once an indictment is brought, the Grand Jury’s role is over when it comes to that defendant. That’s the way it works.”
But the Grand Jury that indicted Stone said the case is still live.
Continued Maddow: “All Grand Juries do is indict people. If the Grand Jury is still working on this, still taking more testimony on this after Roger Stone has already been indicted, if this is still a live case before that Grand Jury, that means they are still working on another potential indictment related to Roger Stone and Wikileaks and what Russia stole from the Democrats….And it could mean that it’s just that Roger Stone is going to get indicted again — there could be some superseding indictment coming for Roger Stone on top of the seven felony counts he’s already looking at. It could be that. But it could also mean that somebody else is potentially looking at getting indicted by the same Grand Jury. Because that’s what Andrew Miller has been asked about.”
Miller, Maddow noted at the beginning of her segment, is unknown to most people, a “weird outlier” in the Russia scandal, an ex-aide to Roger Stone who was subpoenaed by Mueller, and complied with one subpoena but refused another. The case regarding Miller’s refusal to obey the subpoena in the Mueller probe has been seized upon by conservatives as a possible way to go before the Supreme Court and have the entire Mueller investigation thrown out.
Maddow went on: “I feel like I would be remiss not to note that the one other person associated with the Trump campaign, besides Roger Stone, who admits to having months of communication with Wikileaks during the campaign – the only other person other than Roger Stone we know of that had months of communications with Wikileaks is … the president’s eldest son and namesake, Donald Trump, Jr.”
She added: “I would be remiss to not point out that there is now a long trail of fairly insistent claims from multiple members of Congress on multiple committees in Congress that there were in fact problems with the testimony of Donald Trump Jr….Members of Congress are telling us now insistently that if there’s anybody who should be worried about that, really, it’s the president’s eldest son who should be most worried.”
Maddow played a clip of Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) both asserting that Donald Jr. lied to their committees.
Maddow then suggested that House Republicans may be trying to protect Donald Jr. by not seating members on the House Intelligence committee, so the committee cannot be convened and therefore be able to provide an official transcript of Donald Jr.’s testimony to the special counsel.
Said Maddow: “If the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his Grand Jury do have an interest in looking at certified transcripts of the testimony of Donald Trump, Jr. or any other witnesses before the House Intelligence Committee, the special counsel’s office can only bring legal action on the basis of someone’s potentially false testimony if they have an official transcript of that. They can only get an official transcript of that testimony once the Intelligence Committee meets and votes to release that official transcript.”
She added: “If Donald Trump, Jr. or anybody else who testified to the House Intelligence is potentially in legal trouble for having lied to that committee — the way that Roger Stone is now in legal trouble, the way Michael Cohen is in legal trouble — House Republicans are effectively protecting those witnesses as long as they don’t seat their members on that committee, so that committee cannot release its official transcript.”
