Stone indictment follows concerning Mueller pattern

Stone has declared that he would never cooperate, but attorney Michael Cohen said he would take a bullet for Trump before he turned against him in an effort to get a reduced sentence. Prosecutors have many weapons at their disposal to get reluctant witnesses to cooperate, such as threatening to indict family members, as in the Michael Flynn case. Civil libertarians should be concerned about the tactics that are being used by Mueller to get witnesses to sing. All Americans nonetheless should be concerned about the “ends justify the means” path taken by the special counsel.

If Mueller ultimately comes up empty on substantive crimes relating to Russia that were committed before he was appointed, and can point only to the three categories of alleged crimes described above, then it will be difficult to declare his investigation a success, or his appointment justified by the results. Based on what we have seen, it would have been far better if a nonpartisan commission of experts had been appointed to investigate Russian involvement in the 2016 election and to make recommendations about how to prevent foreign interference in future American elections.