Stone Ordered to Court after Posts; White House Ties to Saudi Nuclear Project
KING: A federal judge ordering Roger Stone back to court today. That after a social media post he calls a big misunderstanding, but that could easily be viewed as a threat against that judge. Judge Amy Berman Jackson this morning scheduled a Thursday hearing to determine whether she should change the terms of Stone's bail, including rules about any media comments or contacts. The long-time Trump confidant is charged with lying, obstructing justice and witness intimidation. At issue now is an Instagram picture showing Judge Jackson's face with what appears to be gun sight crosshairs lurking over her shoulder. CNN's Evan Perez and Kara Scannell join the conversation. Number one, it's just stupid. Let's just put that on the record. It is stupid to put a picture of a federal judge over -- any federal judge, but the federal judge overseeing your case on Instagram. She's clearly angry. What now?</s>EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, he's going to get a talking to on Thursday. I think the judge has every reason to be angry about this. And I think, you know, federal law enforcement, the U.S. Marshals, are going to take this very seriously. I mean they're probably going to have to increase her security because you never know whether someone stupid might do something as a result of this. And now Roger Stone has, as you noted, he's apologized. He says that he never meant to threaten the judge. The crosshairs were not intended to, in any way, threaten a judge. He says that it was -- somebody who was a volunteer on his, I guess on his staff, who posted this. And he -- but, you know, the bottom line is that he does not like that this is the judge that's overseeing his case. He complains that she's an Obama appointee. She is. And he's not happy that this is the same judge, obviously, who oversaw the Manafort case. The interesting thing is that this judge has actually been treating Roger Stone gingerly. Because, if you remember, in the Manafort case, she slapped a gag order on the first day for far less than what Roger Stone has done.</s>KING: And he -- his lawyers filed this. Undersigned counsel with the attached authority of Roger J. Stone hereby apologize to the court for the improper photograph and comment posted on Instagram today. Mr. Stone recognizes the impropriety and had it removed. That's the apology. This was posed -- we also, if you look at his website, we can show you some pictures. He has a legal defend website.</s>PEREZ: Yes.</s>KING: One of the reasons he's saying these provocative things on "Info Wars," he calls them a legal lynching when he goes on "Info Wars." A does these things on Instagram. A, he's trying to raise money. I suspect the judge will note that as she considers whether to accept that apology.</s>PEREZ: Right. And, look, I mean, one of my favorite albums is Pink Floyd's "Momentary Lapse of Reason." I think he could go in there and just like prostrate himself and say I'm really, really sorry, judge, I'm not going to do it again. But, you know, the fact is, Roger Stone -- for him this is his oxygen, us talking about him. Getting media attention is his oxygen. If the judge wants to cut it off, it's going to be a severe penalty to him.</s>KING: And one would suspect she's going to have some new restrictions as well. We'll watch that on Thursday. Also of note today, House Democrats now say they want to investigate why some White House officials, early in the Trump administration, backed an outside plan to give Saudi Arabia nuclear power reactors. Kara, tell us why this matters specifically and who are the central players the Democrats say are raising flags.</s>KARA SCANNELL, CNN REPORTER: Right. So the Democrats were looking here to determine whether the White House was pursuing this strategy to export nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia in the best interest of U.S. national security or to line the pockets of people associated and close to those in the White House. And this all relates to this plan by a private company that's run by former generals and it was promoted inside the White House by Michael Flynn, who was then the national security adviser. Now, they were pushing this plan forward, but staffers on -- the career staffers, even -- and some political appointees on the National Security Council had said, you know, hold on, this raises a lot of red flags. There are questions here about conflicts of interest because of the potential financial gain to some of these individuals, as well as whether it would violate the Atomic Energy Act, which requires Congress to be involved in decisions of exporting nuclear technologies. And so this was raised multiple times. You know, there was even one senior political appointee who was, you know, pretty senior up (ph) according to this staff report who said, this is not a business plan but a scheme for these generals to make some money. So there were -- there were concerns here that went beyond this. They brought these concerns of staffers to legal advisers, to ethics advisers. And multiple times they tried to shut this down. They said, you know, stop pursuing this plan. But then again, it would repopulate itself, either from Michael Flynn pushing it, some of his deputies in the National Security Council, you know, as well as this external company keep bringing it forward saying, hey, we're going to lose our edge. So, you know, the big concern here is that the administration was pushing through this, even though there were objections by career staffers, by other politicians, by the legal team saying, hey, you can't do this, you have to follow proper protocol. You can't just, you know, give out, you know, proposals and plans that are going to help your friends.</s>KING: Right. So a new sign of the Democratic oversight on Capitol Hill and yet another sign of, let's just say the swamp was not drained. Up next for us, Sen. Elizabeth Warren pitches her universal child care plan. The price tag and her idea to pay for it.