There’s no Jan. 6 justice while Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and Steve Bannon walk free

You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that Roger Stone — the major GOP fixer dating back to the Richard Nixon era — was a major player in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when an insurrection roiled Capitol Hill. Heck, Inspector Clouseau or Mall Cop’s Paul Blart could probably find this connection.

“This is nothing less than an epic struggle for the future of this country between dark and light, between the godly and the godless, between good and evil,” Stone told a throng of Donald Trump supporters at a chilly evening rally on Jan. 5, less than 24 hours before several thousand stormed the U.S. Capitol and tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power to President Joe Biden. As Stone spoke, he was surrounded by members of the Proud Boys, the group whose leaders would later be convicted of sedition for their role in the insurrection. He added that “I will be with you tomorrow, shoulder-to-shoulder” — even though his exact whereabouts on Jan. 6 are unknown.

Stone was spotted the morning of the storming of the Capitol on the front steps of Washington’s famed Willard Hotel, this time surrounded by members of the Oath Keepers paramilitary group, which has also been taken down in the Jan. 6 probe. Inside the hotel, as the attempted coup unfolded, was a rogues’ gallery of Trump World that included two disgraced former top aides to the 45th president, Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon, and two lawyers who were recently indicted in Georgia along with Trump, Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.

While Trump, front-runner for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, prepares to defend himself in four separate criminal cases, Stone burst back into the headlines last week with the release of documentary footage showing that the convicted-and-pardoned Trump adviser was discussing a version of the so-called fake electors scheme on Nov. 5, 2020 — even before TV networks had called the race for Biden.

“Any legislative body may decide on the basis of overwhelming evidence of fraud to send electors to the Electoral College who accurately reflect the president’s legitimate victory in their state which was illegally denied him through fraud,” Stone dictated to an aide, as captured on video by filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen. The never-before-seen footage proves that at least one key Trump adviser was pushing to overturn Biden victories in key states two days before the election was even called for Biden. Analysts say the tape seriously undercuts Trump’s potential defense that he truly believed he had won the 2020 election.

To me, the new video is merely more proof of what we’ve already known for more than two years: Stone was up to his eyeballs in involvement in the two-month campaign to overturn the legitimate election results that led to the violence on Jan. 6. But it also points to one of the biggest remaining mysteries around Trump’s attempted coup.

With more than 1,100 people criminally charged in connection with Jan. 6 or the events leading up to it — from the foot soldiers who breached the Capitol to the leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to Trump and his legal advisers — how has Stone gone untouched?

And what about the others who comprised what could be called the political wing of the attempted coup? That includes Flynn — the former general and short-time national security adviser to Trump — who joined Stone in urging on the January protesters and who offered strategic advice to Trump and his team during the key December run-up. And also Bannon, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and former White House aide, who was also part of the Willard Hotel “war room” during insurrection week and who warned his podcast listeners that “all hell is going to break loose.”

The fate of these three major insiders says a lot about whether there can truly be justice for Jan. 6. Certainly, the recent indictment of Trump by special counsel Jack Smith around the schemes to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory is a major, unprecedented step. That said, what was arguably the most serious crime in American history — in essence, an attempted overthrow of democracy — demands legal accountability for everyone involved.

And there’s another bit of urgency around proving the extent of the Jan. 6 insurrection plot and the direct involvement of Trump — who was in contact with Stone, Flynn, and Bannon during this critical period. Legal scholars have suggested that Trump could be disqualified from seeking the presidency in 2024 under the 14th Amendment, which bars anyone who took part in an insurrection against the United States.

» READ MORE: Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and the criminal conspiracy case of U.S. v. Donald Trump | Will Bunch

But Trump was not charged with insurrection by Smith, who evidently concluded that Trump’s comments exhorting people at a Jan. 6 rally to march on the Capitol could be argued as free speech. But arguably no one would be better positioned to prove that the president was plugged into the Jan. 6 preplanning and the Willard Hotel “war room” than Stone, Flynn, and Bannon.

Their story arguably begins with another White House scandal: Trump’s unprecedented abuse of his presidential pardon power, which allowed him to provide these key allies a clean slate in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6. Stone, who was convicted of lying to investigators and witness intimidation in Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian election interference, saw his sentence commuted by Trump on July 10, 2020, and was pardoned on Dec. 23, 2020 — exactly two weeks before the insurrection. Flynn, who made a later-contested guilty plea for lying to the FBI in that same investigation, was pardoned by Trump on Nov. 25, 2020. Bannon was facing federal mail fraud charges that winter as he advised Trump on overturning the election; he was pardoned on Trump’s last day in office.

It’s not clear how much Trump’s heavy-handed intervention motivated their work on overturning Biden’s election victory. But we can see that, in different but overlapping ways, the three men provided a critical link in offering the president outrageous, banana-republic-style solutions for preventing Biden from taking office and in working with the various groups and Trump fanatics who descended on Washington for the events of Jan. 6.

Stone, who had played a key role in the so-called Brooks Brothers riot that prevented Miami’s vote recounting in 2000’s disputed election of George W. Bush, had been recorded making antidemocratic statements even before Election Day in 2020. He warned one group of Trump supporters that the election would probably be disputed and that “the key thing to do is claim victory.” On Nov. 2, 2020, he said, “F— the voting, let’s get right to the violence.”

In December 2020, the newly pardoned Stone was in touch with Trump at the same time he was maintaining his longtime close ties with the violent Proud Boys, including a friendship with its leader Enrique Tarrio, who’d be convicted of seditious conspiracy around Jan. 6. Numerous videos show Proud Boys providing security for Stone.

Flynn tweeted out a link calling for Trump to suspend the Constitution and employ the military to rerun the 2020 election on Dec. 3, 2020 — just days after he was pardoned — and offered similar advice to Trump directly at a notorious Oval Office meeting just 15 days later. Flynn would later address the pro-Trump mob that gathered in Washington on the night of Jan. 5 and declare: “This country is awake. ... We will not stand for a lie.”

Bannon — despite his Willard Hotel presence and his podcast exhortations — has kept his links to Jan. 6 more of a mystery, refusing to testify to the House Jan. 6 committee, which ultimately led to his conviction on contempt of Congress charges. Bannon was fined and sentenced to four months behind bars but remains free on appeal. Like the others, he knows that he has a lifeline to liberty if Trump is returned to the White House on Jan. 20, 2025.

So why have these three not been prosecuted for their roles in the events of Jan. 6? No doubt, securing the evidence that would ensure a felony conviction on conspiracy is hard work. It’s possible that Smith — who has placed Trump’s role on the front burner, as the 2024 contest looms — will address their culpability when he eventually gets to the other unindicted coconspirators. Also, given the three men’s penchant for going rogue, it’s possible that one or more of them is cooperating with investigators.

Either way, it’s critical that the role Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and Steve Bannon played on Jan. 6 be fully exposed, and that justice be administered. There’s already been one massive affront to democracy in the pardons that freed them to conspire in the winter of 2020-2021. Their actions nearly destroyed our democracy 31 months ago. Saving democracy requires they finally be brought to account, preferably before the 2024 election.

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