Mueller’s Real Target in the Roger Stone Arrest

Having worked with the FBI on a couple of cases - I even gave some tutorials of real estate transactions to a couple of special agents and assistant U.S. Attorneys in one case - I know one thing.  The FBI's investigations are incredibly thorough and the goal is to assemble a series of four inch thick evidence note books that back up every aspect of indictments in sequence from start to finish.  To say that copies of email. wire transfer orders and documents that dispel lies and witness untruths are their stock in trade is an understatement. Given this reality, a column in the New York Times looks at what may have been the real target of Robert Mueller's indictment of Roger Stone beyond merely pushing Stone towards cooperating: Stone's cell phone(s), computers and encrypted email messages that may document Trump campaign coordination with Russian intelligence officials,  If Stone's message document such coordination and conspiring, Der Trumpenführer's life may be about to get very interesting and unsettling.  Ditto for perhaps Jared Kushner and others in the Trump inner circle.  Here are column highlights:

For many, Friday’s arrest of Roger Stone, the veteran political trickster and longtime adviser to Donald Trump, was a sign that the special counsel investigation into Russian electoral interference is entering its final phase. Yet there were also several indications that the probe may not be as near its conclusion as many observers assume — and that the true target of Friday’s F.B.I. actions was not Mr. Stone himself, but his electronic devices. 

[F]ederal 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. Of course, as the indictment also makes clear, the special counsel has already managed to get its hands on plenty of Mr. Stone’s communications by other means — but one seeming exception jumps out. . . . the special counsel is taking pains to establish that Mr. Stone made a habit of moving sensitive conversations to encrypted messaging platforms like WhatsApp — meaning that, unlike ordinary emails, the messages could not be obtained directly from the service provider. The clear implication is that any truly incriminating communications would have been conducted in encrypted form — and thus could be obtained only directly from Mr. Stone’s own phones and laptops. And while Mr. Stone likely has limited value as a cooperating witness — it’s hard to put someone on the stand after charging them with lying to obstruct justice — the charges against him provide leverage in the event his cooperation is needed to unlock those devices by supplying a cryptographic passphrase.

Of course, Mr. Mueller is likely interested in his communications with Trump campaign officials, but the detailed charges filed against the Russian hackers alleged to have broken into the Democratic National Committee’s servers also show the special counsel’s keen interest in Mr. Stone’s communications with the hacker “Guccifer 2.0,” an identity said to have been used as a front for the Russian intruders.

And if this really is the first time Mr. Mueller’s office is seeing the most sensitive communications from a key figure like Mr. Stone, it’s likely they’ll come away with new leads to follow and new questions to pose to other witnesses.

We may ultimately look back on Mr. Stone’s arrest not as the beginning of the special counsel’s endgame, but the point when the investigation began to really heat up.