I can see that, but if I were the prosecutor, I wouldn't want that to be my keystone charge on Stone. There's no bad case law on using the charge that way, but there's also not a lot of great case law. And for various reasons, DOJ hates dealing with staged conspiracy charges.
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I maybe disagree with you a little there. If the primary objective of Stone's conspiracy was post-election chaos, then it'd be easier to get him on the CFAA-conspiracy mens rea than the ConFraudUS mens rea.
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I don't rule out Stone being included there either, especially since he was kibbitzing in various manners for more hacking. Don't forget the Peter Smith operation, for example.
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Or even POTUS. What the GRU indictment sets up is Trump asking for more hacking, and HOURS LATER GRU doing that hacking.
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Yeah. Absent a report, I expect that the most likely role for POTUS is being named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the broader indictment of a bunch of inner-circle people. One thing I'm interested in is why Mueller is being so lackadaisical about pushing the POTUS interview.
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For reasons I won't get into, I don't rule out Mueller charging the conspiracy with POTUS as Male 1 BEFORE an interview, not least to forestall pardons.
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I agree. It may not just forestall pardons, it may render them legally impossible -- depending on whether a pardon can be obstruction in furtherance of a conspiracy.
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Right. So I think he's waiting to see if Manafort really wants to go to trial, tidying up Stone, and otherwise is pretty close.
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Strongly agreed. There are things from the GRU indictment which indicate that some of the information from the indictment could not have been obtained any later than March of 2017. DOJ could have pushed that indictment out much earlier than this summer.
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