Pardon Recipient Roger Stone Makes Wild Claim on Unfair Justice System

Roger Stone said Friday he wants to fix America’s broken justice system, conveniently forgetting the time he got bailed out of criminal charges by his buddy Donald Trump.

During Stone’s address at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, the longtime GOP operative and self-proclaimed “agent provocateur” explained what he believed Trump’s allies hope to gain from a second stint in the White House.

“What we seek is a rebalance of the scales of justice, so this country can return to one standard of justice, not the two-tiered justice system,” Stone said in a video posted on X by CBS News’s senior White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs.

It’s sort of unclear to which two-tiered justice system Stone was referring—could it possibly have been the one that secured him a presidential pardon after he was indicted for lying to Congress about Russian tampering in the 2016 presidential election, witness tampering, and obstruction? The very same system that rescued him, the president-elect’s longtime friend and ally, from a 40-month prison sentence? Surely not that one, right?

There are certainly serious problems with the country’s justice system worthy of the attention of the president of the United States—but Stone’s not talking about those. No, he’s most likely talking about the system that pardoned Hunter Biden for gun charges and tax evasion, or the system that pursued charges against the rioters at the January 6 insurrection, whose violence Stone cheered on.

Ultimately, MAGA is not seeking to “rebalance the scales”; it’s seeking to throw the scale out and do whatever the hell Trump wants. But if Stone is seriously interested in being prosecuted for tax evasion, the Justice Department can definitely make that happen.

Elon Musk is hoping to dispel the widely circulating notion that he, not President-elect Trump, is really calling the shots.

On Thursday, X user Lulu Cheng Meservey called such speculations indicative of a wider “strategy” to sow discord between Musk and Trump. “By jabbing Trump about not being the alpha, the idea is to provoke him to sideline Elon and to fray the relationship,” Meservey wrote.

Musk agreed, writing in a quote-tweet Friday, “The political & legacy media puppets all got their new instructions yesterday and are now parroting the same message to drive a wedge between [Trump] and me. They will fail.”

The “President Musk” rhetoric began after the billionaire, whose financial support for Trump and other Republican candidates made him 2024’s biggest political donor, helped tank a bipartisan spending bill. Musk unleashed a fusillade of criticism on his social media platform, X, as well as a threat to fund primary challenges against representatives who voted to pass the deal.

Later that day, President-elect Trump came out against the deal, and after a failed vote on a revised bill Thursday, House Republicans are scrambling to put together an eleventh-hour plan to avoid a government shutdown.

Musk has since tried to shift blame and downplay his role in the outcome. He’s also apparently hoping to shut down Democrats’ suggestions that his outsize role in the legislative process indicates that he’s the one truly pulling the strings in the incoming Trump administration.

Many Democrats leapt on the events of the week to say just that: “The leader of the GOP is Elon Musk,” tweeted Representative Brendan Boyle. “I don’t know why Trump doesn’t just hand him the Oval Office,” said Representative Greg Cesar. “It’s clear who’s in charge, and it’s not President-elect Donald Trump,” posted Pramila Jayapal, saying Trump followed the lead of “Shadow President Elon Musk.” (Jayapal’s were the comments that specifically drew Meservey’s, and in turn Musk’s, ire.)

Whatever the state of Musk and Trump’s relationship after the world’s wealthiest man flexed his political muscles this week, the notion that Musk is delivering marching orders seems to have struck a nerve with team Trump. On Thursday, a Trump spokesperson insisted that the president-elect, and no one else, was in charge, saying, “President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. Full stop.”

House Republicans seem poised to give Donald Trump the finger for the second time in less than 24 hours.

Speaker Mike Johnson announced a new continuing resolution plan on Friday that does not include what the president-elect has been pining for for days: an extension to the debt ceiling.

“We have a unified Republican conference. There’s a unanimous agreement in the room that we need to move forward,” Johnson told a room full of reporters. “I will not telegraph to you the specific details of that yet.… I expect that we will be proceeding forward. We will not have a government shutdown.”

Johnson’s new plan, which he has not yet discussed with Trump, will instead be one vote that includes a spending package, disaster aid, farm aid, and the farm bill extension—no debt ceiling changes included. The plan C comes after 38 House Republicans on Thursday evening voted against a Trump-backed plan that would extend the debt ceiling by two years.

Johnson’s move is sure to draw the ire of both Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who has been threatening to primary any Republican who does not agree to a continuing resolution on Trump’s terms (or his).

Elon Musk is now threatening to get rid of Democratic lawmakers, but he has no idea who he’s dealing with … no, seriously he has no idea who he’s complaining about.

Musk responded Friday to a video of Representative Richie Neal, the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, where the Massachusetts Democrat slammed the unelected bureaucrat for trying to kill the bipartisan spending bill needed to keep the government running.

“A tweet changed all of it?” Neal scoffed, referring to Musk’s deluge of posts on X Wednesday and Thursday instructing Republicans to oppose the bill, threatening to oust the ones who didn’t, and cheering on the increasingly inevitable government shutdown.

“Can you imagine what the next two years will be like if every time that Congress works its will, and then there’s a tweet, or from an individual who has no official portfolio, who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary, and they succumb?” Neal asked.

“This institution has a separate responsibility based on the separation of powers,” he warned.

Musk didn’t like this at all, apparently, and replied in his new favorite way: a threat to buy Neal out of his seat.

“Oh … forgot to mention that I’m also going to be funding moderate candidates in heavily Democrat districts, so that the country can get rid of those who don’t represent them, like this jackass,” Musk wrote.

But Neal is a fairly moderate Democrat, who has been a representative in Massachusetts—a fairly Democratic state—for more than three decades. In November, he was reelected to his role leading the state’s first district by 62 percent of the vote, handily beating an independent challenger.

That’s not to say Musk couldn’t somehow find a challenger to oppose Neal, but the billionaire technocrat clearly thinks he can throw money at any problem and move the dial. While money and a right-wing propaganda machine may have an outsized influence in Congress, Musk may be starting to realize that he’s just not cut out for this whole politics thing.

The list of people who hate Nancy Mace is growing longer with each passing day.

On Friday, the cantankerous Republican representative’s former consultant took to X to air her out. 

“You can stop texting me. I fired Nancy Mace as [a] client a few months back because I’m a political consultant and not a babysitter, a sex therapist or a doctor who can prescribe fixes for chemical imbalances,” wrote Wesley Donehue, CEO of the political consulting firm Push Digital. “I don’t have time for her constant egotistical bullshit and drama in my life.”

In a follow-up tweet, Donehue clarified that he was reacting to Mace’s own attack on fellow Republicans. His comment seems to align with the jabs Mace and fellow Republican Representative Trey Gowdy have been exchanging. 

“Nancy Mace would not be in the House if it weren’t for Donald Trump, and she can’t vote the way that he asks her to today?” Gowdy told Fox News on Thursday. “I hope he’s got as long a memory for House members as he does senators that even threaten to not support one of his nominees.”  

“I have a message for Trey Gowdy: You let Hillary Clinton off the hook for Benghazi. Sit your ass back down,” Mace posted on X later that night. 

“Which bathroom do we think Trey Gowdy uses? #HoldTheLine,” she said in another, attaching a picture of Gowdy and bizarrely implying he is transgender.
 
Donehue responded to this directly on X. “Imagine wanting to run statewide and thinking this is a good idea. The upstate loves Trey Gowdy. This is what happens when a person cannot control their emotions enough to think strategically.”

Mace has made a fool of herself multiple times since the election: going on a public transphobic tirade to target Sarah McBride, the first and only trans member of Congress, claiming that she was assaulted by a trans activist who says he simply shook her hand, and now the intraparty bullying. Can’t wait to see the next desperate media ploy for attention.