Why is a Trump operative so interested in Cliven Bundy?

[DonViejo]

Roger Stone says he is heading to Nevada this week to call for a presidential pardon.

Tay Wiles Sept. 13, 2017

Roger Stone, an on-and-off adviser of President Donald Trump, says he will be in Las Vegas this Friday to demand a pardon for rancher Cliven Bundy and his co-defendants, who are currently awaiting federal trial. Stone also made public appearances in July in Nevada to urge Trump to intervene in the Bundy case, which is centered on the 2014 standoff between armed Bundy supporters and federal employees attempting to round up the rancher’s illegally grazing cattle.

The case has become a symbol of longstanding disagreements in Western states over how public lands should be managed, as well as a rallying point for the “Patriot” movement, a loose network of militias and far-right individuals and groups across the country, including in the rural West. The arrival of Stone, a controversial political operative, in Las Vegas this week, is another strange turn to a series of cases that have vexed federal prosecutors from Oregon to Nevada.

Link to tweet

Stone is in many ways an odd bedfellow for the Bundys, since he is a longtime Washington insider with no apparent connection to ranching or public-lands issues. The Florida resident is a men’s fashion editor of The Daily Caller, a conservative political website, who embraces his reputation as a “trickster” and who pushes the boundaries of ethical behavior farther than most. In contrast to Bundy’s reputation among his supporters as upstanding and salt-of-the-earth, “Stone sees morality as a synonym for weakness,” New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin says in the documentary Get Me Roger Stone released earlier this year.

Stone is nothing if not prolific: He consulted for presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon — whose face Stone has tattooed on his back. Stone has also consulted for foreign dictatorships in Zaire and the Philippines. Stone’s former lobbying firm “created the modern sleazeball lobbyist,” Toobin says. In the 1980s, Stone’s firm was among the first to help elect a political candidate, only to then lobby them. He readily takes credit for pioneering political attack advertising, now a stress-inducing mainstay of electoral politics. He also co-founded a political action committee, or PAC, which would eventually transform American politics by infusing massive donations into the process.

more
http://www.hcn.org/articles/politics-why-is-roger-stone-so-interested-in-cliven-bundy

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Good question, as to the issue it makes perfect sense to be Stone and want to pardon

a criminal and traitor who attacked America, right.

But why go out on a limb for such a small time traitor?

[Thomas Hurt]

2. The Bundys are part of the same far right cesspool as Arpaio....

sovereigns/constitutionalists
patriot movement, birchers
KKK/nativists/fascists
militias

and other assorted loons.

[Docreed2003]

3. WTF....

So now there are folks pressuring the executive branch to put their support behind unlawful militia types who, whenever they feel laws don't apply to them, are emboldened to take up arms against federal officials???

[Eugene]

4. W-T-F! Sad state of affairs that Stone can do this so openly.