We Still Don’t Know What Happened Between Trump and Russia

All of this is to say that Stone and Trump were closely linked. Stone was also an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign in its early stages. He left the campaign, but remained in frequent contact with Trump; he also recommended Manafort to Trump as an aide.

In the Mueller report and in Stone’s trial, prosecutors presented evidence that showed Stone had tried to acquire emails that Russia had hacked from Democratic Party officials. Stone was apparently aware of WikiLeaks dumps before they arrived, forecasting that it would soon be the Hillary Clinton campaign chair John “Podesta’s time in the barrel.”

During the trial, Gates, who took a plea deal to cooperate with prosecutors, recounted a meeting with Trump on July 31, 2016. WikiLeaks had just released some emails damaging to the Clinton campaign. While Gates was present, Trump took a call from Stone. When the call ended, Gates testified, Trump told him that WikiLeaks would deliver “more information.”

David A. Graham: Mueller won’t say it, but Trump clearly obstructed justice

That is at odds, sort of, with the president’s account. In his written answers to Mueller, Trump hedged about his conversations with Stone, claiming no memory (emphasis mine): “I do not recall being told during the campaign that Roger Stone or anyone associated with my campaign had discussions with any of the entities named in the question regarding the content or timing or release of hacked emails … I have no recollection of being told that Roger Stone, anyone acting as an intermediary for Roger Stone, or anyone associated with my campaign had communicated with WikiLeaks on October 7, 2016 … I spoke by telephone with Roger Stone from time to time during the campaign. I have no recollection of the specifics of any conversations I had with Mr. Stone between June 1, 2016, and November 8, 2016. I do not recall discussing WikiLeaks with him …”

Prosecutors convinced jurors that Stone lied when he told Congress that he had no records of communications with his intermediary with WikiLeaks or with the Trump campaign about WikiLeaks. They offered a theory for why, too. “Roger Stone lied … because the truth looked bad for the Trump campaign and the truth looked bad for Donald Trump,” a federal prosecutor—Aaron Zelinsky, an alumnus of Mueller’s team—said in court. But why, exactly, did the truth look bad for Trump? What, exactly, was the truth?

Laws against witness tampering, false statements, and obstruction are intended to discourage criminals from impeding investigations to avoid punishment—and to create a fail-safe if they do so anyway, by ensuring that they are still punished for something. It looks like Stone will indeed be punished for something. But if his goal was to protect Trump—and obscure the truth—his obstruction worked.

Stone, who refused to cut a deal with prosecutors, may be angling for a pardon from the president. Pardons have not been forthcoming for Flynn or Manafort so far, but Trump did tweet in anger after the verdict, offering a nonsensical list of people he claimed should be in prison:

So they now convict Roger Stone of lying and want to jail him for many years to come. 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?

Trump is right that there is a double standard, but it’s not what he thinks: It’s the standard that sends his aides to prison for putting roadblocks before federal prosecutors, even as the obstructor in chief skates free.

David A. Graham is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers U.S. politics and global news.