Thread by @normative

Most interesting thing to my mind in the Stone indictment: There’s a direct quote where Stone asks to move a sensitive conversation to an encrypted channel, but all the other references are to plaintext e-mails or SMS conversations.

Obvious question: Did Mueller have access to Stone’s WhatsApp messages or other encrypted channels? One obvious reason to lie about whether he had written comms with Corsi or Credico would be to forestall a subpoena or warrant for those comms.

This *implies* that they did, or at least learned the substance of the WhatsApp communication, but seems conspicuously vague about how, relative to other descriptions. We go from the specific “texted” or “sent an e-mail” to the more nebulous “told.”

It seems odd Stone’s most incriminating exchanges would be in the clear given his clear preference to switch to a secure channel for sensitive conversations. The indictment seems written to deliberately preserve ambiguity about the extent of Mueller’s access to WhatsApp comms.

Also, the heavy-handed pre-dawn arrest with a dozen FBI agents seems unlikely to be motivated by fear Stone would come out guns blazing. The plausible reason you’d do that is if there’s additional evidence you want to secure & prevent him from being able to wipe/lock quickly.

I don’t recall any prior report of any execution of a search warrant to directly access physical endpoint devices in Stone’s possession. Which would be the only way to gain full access to his encrypted comms with any & all parties. Might THAT be the real goal?

The sections on Stone’s alleged obstruction & false testimony also read like a search warrant application: They’re an argument that Stone sought to conceal the existence of relevant written comms, ergo could not be trusted to produce them in response to a subpoena.

That said... I can’t imagine Stone wouldn’t have deleted local copies of anything really incriminating long, long ago. So if that’s an aim, I don’t know how much material of value they’re likely to get out of it.

FWIW, I note that CNN describes the arrest as happening “just after the hour” of 6 am. In other words, literally the earliest possible moment they could do it without getting a judge to authorize an exception to Rule 41’s presumption warrants are executed in “daytime” hours.

More generally, this doesn’t seem like one of Mueller’s “speaking indictments”—almost everything in there was already on the public record. With only a couple exceptions, it turns vague as soon as it gestures in the direction of anything not already reported.

I also note Mueller’s previous filings have shown clear interest in Stone’s communications with “Guccifer 2.0”—no mention of that here. On Stone’s version of events, he traded a few DMs with Guccifer, but never responded to offers of help from the hacker.

That’s always seemed more than a little odd given that we now know Stone was simultaneously taking great pains to find out what kind of additional hacked material might be forthcoming.

Also, not to belabor the obvious, but if this was in part aimed at gathering additional digital evidence, it would imply they’re not nearly as close to wrapping this all up as everyone keeps suggesting.