Thread by @ShimonPro

Reading the transcript from yesterday’s closing arguments. Cause a lot of this got lost yesterday I am going to tweet some of the highlights. There were some big moments. What else is there to do while we wait for a verdict.

Prosecutor: he was communicating with the Trump campaign about WikiLeaks' plans every chance he got.
Roger Stone knew that if this information came out, it would look really bad for his longtime associate Donald Trump, so he lied to the committee.

Roger Stone told five categories of lies before the committee. He lied about the identity of his intermediary or go-between with WikiLeaks that he was publicly bragging about in August of 2016. He lied about asking his intermediary to get WikiLeaks to do things for him in 2016.

He lied about telling the Trump campaign about his conversations with the intermediary. He lied about his written communications with the intermediary, and he lied about his other written communications about Assange.

Roger Stone's longtime associate Donald Trump is running for president of the United States. Back in 2015, Mr. Stone was employed with the Trump campaign. By this time, July 2016, he is no longer employed with the Trump campaign, but he is talking regularly with the highest

levels of the campaign: Deputy Chairman Rick Gates; CEO Steve Bannon; Campaign Manager Paul Manafort; and even the candidate himself.
So when this Twitter message comes out, Roger Stone sees a chance help the Trump campaign and he jumps at it.

June 14, 2016, on the day that the DNC announces that they have been hacked and they think it was the Russians. On the day that announcement comes out, Roger Stone has a phone conversation with the candidate, Donald Trump.

Again on June 30th, on the day that Guccifer 2.0, the entity that claimed credit for the hack, comes out and praises Donald Trump in a WordPress post, Stone has another phone conversation with Donald Trump.

One hour before Roger Stone sends this email to Jerome Corsi, "Malloch should see Assange," Roger Stone has a phone conversation first with Rick Gates, and then with the candidate, Donald Trump.

Remember, Gates testified, he said: Mr. Trump and I are in a car. It's a Suburban. We're going from Trump Tower to LaGuardia Airport.
He said: I'm sitting diagonally. This is really like two and a half rows not three rows. I'm sitting diagonal from him.

He says: Candidate Trump has a phone call.
Gates says: I can hear it's Roger Stone's voice on the other end of the phone. Trump hangs up the phone, and within 30 seconds, Trump says to Gates: More information is coming.

So when WikiLeaks finally does release more emails on October 7, who asks for credit? Roger Stone.
And who gets the credit? Roger Stone.
All of this evidence shows that Stone was discussing his conversations with the intermediary, with people involved in the Trump campaign.

Is that what Stone tells the committee? No. He lies again. Why is Stone lying about this?
Ladies and gentlemen, Roger Stone is a political strategist. He knows how this is going to look.

A committee of the United States House of Representatives is examining whether the Russians were involved in the WikiLeaks releases, and here is Stone giving the campaign inside information on those releases over and over again. This is going to look terrible for Trump.

And Stone is worried that what he says and does in the hearing is going to reflect back on the president.

Here’s the defense: The government has given a very energetic argument about why they think Mr. Stone is guilty of these various offenses, but it begins from a very flawed purpose,

and that flawed purpose actually began in the opening statement when they said the reason for Mr. Stone to have lied was to protect Mr. Trump and the Trump campaign. That is absolutely false.

But again I come back to: So what; so what, that they were interested in this. And he was actually pleased, of course, they wanted to get that information, and Gates, of course, wanted the same information. Gates was pleased to. I think Gates said that they were happy.

I think happiness was the description that Gates used in terms of this information becoming available. Disappointed when it didn't, it wasn't forthcoming when they wanted, but they were pleased with it.
And now we come to this very, very thin read that the government is asking

you that is the foundation for their whole theory about why Roger Stone lied, to protect the campaign and to protect Donald Trump.
What read is it built on; it's built on Gates saying that he -- he heard Roger Stone's voice. It was an accurate description, it was a Suburban,

two secret servicemen in the front, Donald Trump in the center, and Gates relegated to the back. And there's a telephone call. Nobody knows what that call is about. Afterwards, Gates says Trump says there'll be more coming.
What does that mean?

This kind of ambiguity, you didn't hear the conversation, how do you build a case on something that the party whose trying to build it, the government, and I guess Gates through his connection now to the government,

how do you build a case on something that nobody knows what was said?

Let me go beyond that: Even if it did, what's the matter with that, what is the matter with that. There is nothing illegal about that. This was not information -- if there was information that was published by WikiLeaks, it was information that was publicly known.

And I'll end with what I started with: There could be no sensible motive in trying to protect the campaign when the campaign was long since over and Mr. Trump was the president of
the United States.

Now to probably some of the biggest moments in the court when the US attorney gave the rebuttal argument.

I'm not going to talk about every single issue that Mr. Rogow brought up, but I'm going to address a few of them. And the first one I want to address is motive.

Mr. Rogow spent a lot of time discussing, well, Mr. Stone's motive. He said, this is Mr. Rogow's words: "There was no need to protect Trump in the campaign. There was no purpose for Mr. Stone to lie. Why would Stone lie?

As my colleague Aaron Zelinsky said to you when this case first opened a week ago, the reason for Mr. Stone's motive was clear; the truth looked bad for the Trump campaign, and the truth looked bad for Donald Trump.

Now Mr. Rogow says, well, this all happened after the
campaign, after Donald Trump was elected.

There was an investigation going on at that time as to
whether any nefarious activity occurred during that campaign and whether people that were involved in government or involved in a campaign had colluded or had connections with Russia.

You don't think if information came out that Mr. Stone, who was a former adviser of Mr. Trump, who was an associate of Mr. Trump, had been spending that time during the campaign trying to fish for information from WikiLeaks,

knowing that that information was hacked, possibly by a foreign government, that wouldn't look bad? That wouldn't look bad? And that's why he tried to hide it.

I'm not going to go through everything that Mr. Rogow said, but I want to end with just one point. In Mr. Rogow's closing, he said something that I want to briefly address, and he said: So what? So what? Much of this case, you have to ask, so what?

Well, if that's the state of affairs that we're in, I'm pretty shocked. Truth matters. Truth still matters, okay?

And I know we live in a world nowadays with Twitter, tweets, social media, where you can find any view, any political view you want. You can find your own truth.

However, in our institutions of self-governance, courts of law or committee hearings, where people under oath have to testify, truth still matters. When Mr. Stone came in, he lied to Congress. He obstructed their investigation,

and he tampered with a witness. And that matters. And you don't look at that and you don't say, so what.
For those reasons we ask you to find him guilty of the charged offenses. Thank you.