Steve Bannon will be surprise witness at Roger Stone trial

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Steve Bannon will be surprise witness at Roger Stone trial

Stone is accused of lying to House intelligence committee about Trump campaign’s efforts to obtain emails hacked by Russia

David Smith in Washington
@smithinamerica
Wed 6 Nov 2019 20.28 GMT
Last modified on Wed 6 Nov 2019 21.17 GMT

Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, will be a star witness at the trial in Washington of Roger Stone, a longtime political operative and ally of Donald Trump, a court heard on Wednesday.

The surprise announcement was made during opening statements on Wednesday by prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky, who told the court that Stone had “straight-up lied” to the US Congress about aspects of the 2016 election campaign “because the truth looked bad for Donald Trump”.

A self-described “dirty trickster”, Stone is accused of lying to the House of Representatives intelligence committee about the Trump campaign’s efforts to obtain emails hacked by Russia that were published by the WikiLeaks website with the effect of harming Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

On day two of Stone’s trial at a federal court in Washington, Zelinsky told the jury they would hear from Bannon, who was chief executive of the Trump campaign and went on to work at the White House. This sets the stage for the most high-profile and bruising scrutiny yet of the inner workings of the 2016 Trump campaign, months after the Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller wound up.

Zelinsky said the court will also hear from the former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates, who testified for the government last year in a trial that led to the conviction of the former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/06/steve-bannon-surprise-witness-roger-stone-trial-trump-russia

[Buckeyeblue]

1. I'm surprised Barr hasn't put a stop to this. Maybe he can't.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. He can't, unless he wants to call the wrath of the judge down on himself.

He doesn't and can't control the judiciary. If someone has been listed as a witness in a case and Barr tried to prevent that witness from testifying, that might even be considered witness tampering. I suppose he could try to lean on the prosecutor to remove Bannon from the list, but the prosecutor would probably take it to the judge and that would be the end of that.

[Buckeyeblue]

3. No. I meant dropping the charges.