Does It Really Matter Whether Stone Flips Or Not?

(This caricature of Roger Stone is by DonkeyHotey.)

Trump's longtime associate, Roger Stone, was arrested last Friday morning. He was indicted by the Mueller investigation team on seven felony counts -- one count of witness tampering, one count of obstruction of justice, and 5 counts of making false statements.

It would be an understatement to say Stone's goose is cooked. Mueller's team has plenty of evidence.

This has started a lot of talk on cable news shows about the possibility of Stone flipping and cooperating with the Mueller investigation. This talk is just silly. Stone has repeatedly said he would not testify against Trump, and it's doubtful that his testimony would help anyway.

Considering the nuttiness and obvious lying that Stone has done, would you believe him if he testified?

Isn't it likely if he offered to flip and testify that he would continue working with Trump (just like Manafort did)?

And the most important question of all -- DOES MUELLER EVEN WANT STONE TO FLIP?

Here's some of what former federal prosecutor Paul Zeidenberg had to say at The Daily Beast:

The long-anticipated indictment of Roger Stone finally dropped on Friday, and it landed on Stone like the proverbial ton of bricks. As someone who prosecuted Scooter Libby and others on similar charges and defended white-collar cases involving similar charges as those alleged here—false statements, obstruction of justice and witness tampering—my takeaway is that Stone should begin getting his affairs in order. Barring a presidential pardon (always the wild-card possibility with a POTUS like Trump) Stone will be convicted and receive a very substantial prison sentence. This is as close to a slam-dunk case as a prosecutor will ever bring. . . .

Finally, do not expect to see Special Counsel Robert Mueller make any attempt to flip Stone and have him cooperate. A defendant like Stone is far more trouble than he is worth to a prosecutor. Stone is too untrustworthy for a prosecutor to ever rely upon. He has told so many documented lies, and bragged so often about his dirty tricks, that he simply has too much baggage to deal with even if here to want to cooperate—which seems unlikely in any event. Mueller, I suspect, would not even be willing to engage in a preliminary debrief with Stone to just test the possibility of cooperation out of concern that Stone would immediately go on television with his pals at Fox News to decry Mueller’s Gestapo tactics. 

In short, Mueller does not need Stone to get to someone else and, even if he did, he could not rely on whatever Stone told him. Stone has nothing to sell that Mueller would be interested in buying.

Stone is clearly enjoying being in the spotlight now. He should enjoy it while he can. His remaining years won’t be nearly as pleasant.