Donald Trump's man won't turn on him, he boasts; he won't "bear false witness" against a president who's been his friend and palm-greaser through decades of no-good dealings in New York City.
But false witness is exactly what Roger Stone is accused of bearing to federal law enforcement officials, and, by extension, to the American people. A grand jury charges he lied to investigators, tampered with witness testimony and obstructed an official proceeding.
And none of this alleged law-breaking was for the hell of it, but for the very consequential purpose of obscuring a potentially damning connection _ call it coordination, call it collusion _ between the Trump campaign, intermediaries and WikiLeaks, the Russia-allied organization that disseminated hacked documents to damage the Clinton campaign.
That makes six Trump associates now indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as he tries to get at the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about Kremlin-led interference into the 2016 election.
It may well be that Stone's meddling through Trump campaign chief Steve Bannon, and Paul Manafort's many illicit connections with Russian oligarchs, and the meeting with people closely connected to the Kremlin set up by Don Trump Jr., and the criminal lies of George Papadoupolous, and the lies about Trump's business dealings by his fixer Michael Cohen, are wholly unrelated to the man at the top of the pyramid, who was in the dark about it all.
Or it is possible that he at the very least knew what Russia was up to, and at most actively participated in that effort even as he wooed Vladimir Putin for personal business purposes.
The nation must know. Mueller's the man to find out.
