Rudy Giuliani
'He's mapping out the entire conspiracy!' Morning Joe reacts to 'staggering' Roger Stone video
August 17, 2023 8:11AM ET
Roger Stone (Screen cap).
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski reacted to a "staggering" new video that shows Roger Stone mapping out the plot to steal the 2020 election.
The network aired exclusive footage Wednesday night on "The Beat" showing the longtime Republican dirty trickster dictating a strategy on Nov. 5, 2020, to overturn a potential Donald Trump loss by pressuring GOP-led state legislatures, and the former president's attorneys crafted legal justification for the phony electors who sent fraudulent paperwork to Congress and the National Archives ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
“Although state officials in all 50 states must ultimately certify the results of the voting in their state," Stone says in the video recorded by Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen, "the final decision as to who the state legislatures authorize be sent to the Electoral College is a decision made solely by the legislature."
Stone might otherwise have been serving a prison sentence at the time for lying to Congress, obstructing a congressional investigation and tampering with a witness if the former president had not commuted his 40-month sentence that summer.
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“Any legislative body may decide on the basis of overwhelming evidence of fraud to send electors to the Electoral College who accurately reflect the president’s legitimate victory in their state, which was illegally denied him through fraud,” Stone says in the video. “We must be prepared to lobby our Republican legislatures … by personal contact and by demonstrating the overwhelming will of the people in their state — in each state — that this may need to happen."
Ginni Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, was among the Trump allies who pressed state legislators to send a slate of electors loyal to the ex-president, and some of those false electors have been charged with crimes in Georgia and Michigan.
The "Morning Joe" host was amazed that Stone had laid out the conspiracy described by special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis this month in their indictments of the former president.
"It's staggering," Scarborough said. "He's actually, before the election is called, mapping it out. He's mapping out the entire conspiracy that they followed to undermine the election and to take votes away from the voters and have Republican, Trump-friendly state legislators steal states for Donald Trump, and they follow that road map."
"What's fascinating, again, he did this before the election was called," Scarborough added.
Later on in the program, when producers rolled the video evidence, commentator Claire McCaskill wondered why Stone hadn't been indicted for his role in the phony electors scheme.
"It says clearly what we know, they were all engaged in trying to defy the will of the American voter," McCaskill said. "I've had many disappointments in life, [but] I got a great thrill when I read Rudy Giuliani's name in the Georgia indictment, but I am disappointed that Roger Stone has not been indicted anywhere. There's a guy that deserves it. I mean, how does Sidney Powell get indicted and he doesn't get indicted? Maybe he's cooperating, maybe he flipped. One can hope that maybe he's flipped."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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