Roger Stone’s lawyers swear, scout’s honor, that they didn’t intend to hide their client’s book from the court and that they plain old forgot that an upcoming memoir lampooning the Mueller investigation was a good thing to mention at a hearing to determine whether or not Stone required a gag order.
According to a Monday Politico report, Stone attorney Bruce Rogow said in a filing that it wasn’t until he perused the book on a flight after the hearing did it occur to him that it may be problematic.
“Reading for the first time the New Introduction, while waiting for a plane back to Fort Lauderdale, brought the issue home and led to the Motion to Clarify,” wrote Ragow and others on Stone’s legal team. “There was/is no intention to hide anything. The new introduction, post February 21, 2019, presented a question we tried, obviously clumsily, to address. Having been scolded, we seek only to defend Mr. Stone and move ahead without further ado.”
Ragow’s wishes to move on may be hampered by a string of Stone’s emails in which he frets about a possible fuller gag order hampering the book’s release and promotion. U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson instituted an initial, limited gag order shortly after Stone’s indictment to keep him from speaking about the case on the courthouse’s campus.
Berman Jackson hauled Stone into her courtroom to discuss a more serious gag order after he posted a picture of her on Instagram last month with what appeared to be crosshairs in the corner.
Stone is due back in court Thursday.
