White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, and hosts and guests on cable news shows reacted to the indictment of longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone on Jan. 25. (Allie Caren, Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
The growing number of lies that members of President Trump’s team have admitted to or been accused of telling investigators leads to one big question: Why?
Why would these people risk jail time to tell lies if there wasn’t something significant being covered up? Many of them had to know exactly the stakes of lying to the government, and they did it anyway. Why take such a risk to protect … nothing?
It might be the defining question of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation — especially given that this is the predominant crime being charged and pleaded to. We still have no members of the Trump team charged with conspiracy. (Though just because there have been no such charges doesn’t mean they couldn’t be coming. Prosecutors have an incentive to charge smaller crimes before bigger ones and to keep their evidence under wraps.)
View the complete January 28 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.