On Lawfare Chuck Rosenberg notes that Roger Stone, recently arrested by the FBI and charged with lying to Congress, among other things, and he notes that Stone, who many on the right want to excuse for his boyish enthusiasm, appears to be fairly bloody-minded about his enthusiasm:
Stone was also charged with witness tampering, a crime that strikes at the heart of the judicial process. There are numerous allegations in the indictment of Stone urging others to lie. Those urgings clearly run afoul of the witness tampering statute. And, if that’s all there was to it, a summons might be the way to go.
But there is a more compelling reason to arrest him. The devil is in the details. Read, for instance, page 20 of the indictment, where prosecutors note that Stone emailed one witness and called him a “rat” and a “stoolie” and threatened to take that witness’s dog away from him. In another email that same day to that same witness, according to the indictment, Stone wrote “I am so ready. Let’s get it on. Prepare to die [expletive].”
Law enforcement simply does not hand a summons to someone who threatens to kill a witness and trust that person to act responsibly with it. No conscientious prosecutor would think a summons appropriate there, or think that a threat to kill a witness is simply what targets of grand jury investigations routinely do.
That’s why the FBI showed up at 6am and took him away in handcuffs, like any common alleged criminal threatening violence.
But it’s important to note that Process crimes is a phrase which functions as a smokescreen, an obscure and unintelligible phrase unless you’re one of the initiate – and then, because you’re not a lawyer, but just someone who’s being spoon-fed some info, you get to feel elite while actually misunderstanding the character of the crime.
Rosenberg does not go too far when he states that “… witness tampering strikes at the heart of the judicial process.” Sure, it’s not murder, rape, extortion, or blackmail. Nor is it child-molestation, arson, or fraud.
But it is the crime that enables all those others, isn’t it? Think about it. Our judicial process, at it’s best, and it often is, depends on the testimony of witnesses. They can be wrong, confused, or otherwise limited, but the fact remains that, without a witness, many and even most crimes cannot be prosecuted.
When some right-wing pundit insists Stone’s only been charged with process crimes, that it’s hardly a crime at all, be careful about swallowing the bait. Witness tampering can easily be the attempt to close the gateway to extremely serious crimes, and that makes witness-tampering as serious as the crimes Stone is trying to obscure.
