Liberal journalist Lauren Windsor was recently in the news for eliciting very different reactions from Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts when she tried to bait the two — in conversations she surreptitiously recorded — into revealing biases in their thinking that would compromise the impartiality their jobs require.
Roberts acquitted himself honorably, refusing to take Windsor’s bait about the U.S. being a “Christian” nation — the Chief Justice frankly responded that he had some Jewish and Muslim friends that might argue against that premise.
Justice Alito appeared to be less above the fray in his comments, though his answers showed not particular ethical compromise — only a reality check about partisanship.
“One side or the other is going to win,” Alito said on Windsor’s recording. “There are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”
Now Windsor has revealed recordings she and fellow clandestine journalist Ally Sammarco made of conversations they had with former President Donald Trump‘s longtime advisor Roger Stone at Mar-a-Lago, where Stone, a former confidant of Richard Nixon, was a speaker at an event for Catholics supporting Trump.
Stone mostly spoke about preparations for GOP efforts to challenge the election results in the event Trump loses certain precincts. According to Stone, similar efforts in 2020 — including more than 60 lawsuits filed by Trump-aligned groups across the country — will look meager in comparison for what Republicans have planned for 2024, when the attempt to sow doubt into the election process will be among the GOP’s most prominent messages.
Another banger from @lawindsor
‘Lawyers, Judges, Technology’: Roger Stone Touts Plan for Trump Win in Secret Recording – Rolling Stone https://t.co/3fmUrgpwBY
— Reed Galen (@reedgalen) June 19, 2024
The recordings, made before Trump’s conviction in New York on 34 felony counts, show Stone as a less than reliable prognosticator. He predicted that the “Florida case” — the federal classified documents case currently in front of Trump-appointed judge Aileen Cannon — was on its way to being dismissed.
Stone says, hitting each of the cases where Trump is a defendant against felony charges, that the “trial in Georgia is falling apart. I think the judge is on the verge of dismissing the charges against him in Florida. They’re delayed in New York City and they’re now delayed in Washington.”
The delay in New York did not last and Trump was convicted in May on the 34 counts. The Washington case charging Trump with trying to overturn the election results to maintain power is on hold as the Supreme Court considers his claim of presidential immunity.
But contradicting Stone’s prediction, Judge Cannon in Florida has not dismissed the charges against Trump. On the contrary, in early June Cannon rejected Trump’s bid to dismiss the charges, although she agreed with his lawyers that a paragraph describing Trump allegedly showing a classified document to a political operative be struck from the indictment.