Roger Stone, striking a Nixonian pose
Roger Stone, the latest indictee in Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia investigation, apparently has tried some of the dirty tricks for which he is renowned here at Legal Schnauzer. Why do we say that? Well, it goes back to a post we wrote in January 2017:
Evidence in our spam folder here at Legal Schnauzer suggests a Donald Trump ally and former Richard Nixon dirty trickster somehow is involved in a series of harassing, profanity-filled e-mails we started receiving about seven weeks ago.
The ugly e-mails started around the middle of November [2016] after we wrote posts about two Alabamians -- Jeff Sessions (Trump's pick for U.S. attorney general) and Bill Pryor (a Sessions protege and likely Trump nominee for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court).
Who is the notorious Trump ally, known as "The High Priest of Political Hijinks," who appears to be involved with the dozens of nasty missives we've received -- most of which I've deleted or sent to spam because they are so utterly devoid of taste, rational thought, meaningful discourse (or all three)? We are talking about Roger Stone, who has been involved with every Republican campaign or administration since Nixon and perhaps now is best known as a regular guest on Alex Jones' conspiracy-filled InfoWars show.
Wouldn't a veteran political thug of Stone's stature have better things to do than fool around with our little Birmingham blog? A rational person might think so. But then again, Sessions was set to become Trump's AG, and Pryor (at the time) was consider a strong candidate to be a Trump nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. And we had been writing a series of highly unflattering posts on both. (See here, and here.)
What specifics point to Stone, or his surrogates, targeting Legal Schnauzer? Here you go:
Would Stone, or someone close to him, actually have time to mess around with our little blog? After all, this is the guy credited with orchestrating "The Brooks Brothers Riot," which helped give us eight years of George W. Bush in the White House. Stone even has ties to Watergate; some surely would say Stone is too much of a heavyweight to mess with Legal Schnauzer. But there is evidence to suggest it is true. How do we know?
Quite a few of the argumentative and ugly e-mails came from someone who has gone by the name "Sarah." I tried engaging "Sarah" a few times in rational back-and-forth, but that proved to be an exercise in futility. So I started deleting or sending most of her comments to spam. Such e-mails generally have an identifier attached, such as "Anonymous" or "Sarah," if the person chooses to use a first name -- which might or might not be her actual name.
I've received so many such e-mails in recent weeks -- maybe more than 200 -- that I occasionally scroll through the spam folder just to keep a rough track of how many have arrived. During one recent scroll, I noticed that at least one spam e-mail had more than a one-word identifier; it had two words -- "Sarah Jameson."
Sarah Jameson? Who in the heck is that? Well, she has a Facebook page that is pretty much a shrine to Roger Stone -- and it doesn't appear to have changed much since we first encountered it more than two years ago. Here are our thoughts upon finding the Jameson Facebook page in January 2017:
That was enough to make me go "hmmm." A Google search produced the Facebook page for a Sarah Jameson, who apparently lives in Plantation, Florida. That is in Broward County, close to Stone's home in Oakland Park. What does the "Sarah Jameson" Facebook page reveal? It's devoted almost entirely to videos and memes of Donald Trump and Roger Stone -- mostly Stone, also known as "The dapper don of dirty deeds."
There is a video of Stone hawking his books. Here is Stone touting the choice of Steve Bannon as Trump's chief strategist. There is Stone being touted as a "genius" in an interview after Trump's "victory.""Sarah Jameson" sure seems to dig Roger Stone. In fact, she apparently has no time for anything else. She only has 18 Facebook friends, and I know squirrels in the forest who have bigger followings than that.
I'm still not sure what to make of Sarah Jameson and her fascination with Roger Stone. Here is a link to her Twitter account, which seems to consist mostly of more flagellation of Roger Stone. From our earlier post:
The Facebook page makes me wonder if "Sarah Jameson" is even real. Did someone pick clip art of an anonymous young blonde woman and use it to create a fake page, one that actually is run by Roger Stone or one of his surrogates?
My best guess is that Stone is concerned about our unflattering reports (both completed posts and those that are coming) about Jeff Sessions and Bill Pryor and is trying to harass me into inaction or avoidance. I would suggest that Stone come up with something better than that, because his current track is not going to work.
Sarah Jameson
I don't think it's so odd that Trump and his surrogates would focus on Alabama. Sessions, one of his closest advisers during the campaign, is from Alabama. One of Trump's likely high-court nominees is from Alabama. And one of Trump's top campaign stops was in Mobile, Alabama.As a progressive blogger from Alabama, who has been unlawfully jailed for my reporting on GOP corruption, perhaps I am a thorn -- maybe small, maybe big -- in their side. And so, Roger Stone has been assigned, or taken it upon himself, to mess with me.:
How is this for irony? The New York Times reports that Mueller's primary interest with the Stone indictment might not be the dirty trickster himself, but rather his electronic devices:
Federal agents were “seen carting hard drives and other evidence from Mr. Stone’s apartment in Harlem, and his recording studio in South Florida was also raided.”
The F.B.I., in other words, was executing search warrants, not just arrest warrants. Even the timing and manner of Mr. Stone’s arrest — at the absolute earliest moment allowed under federal rules of criminal procedure without persuading a judge to authorize an exceptional nighttime raid — suggests a concern with preventing destruction of evidence: Otherwise it would make little sense to send a dozen agents to arrest a man in his 60s before sunrise.
What if a review of Stone's electronic devices provided clues about attacks on Legal Schnauzer? What if it provided clues about the identify of Sarah Jameson? We suspect Mueller's team will have bigger issues on their plates than those, but we will have our ears in the "upright and locked position" in case tidbits that hit close to home rise to the surface.