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While the commutation was celebrated by Trump’s most stalwart supporters, the muted response by Republican lawmakers and Stone’s own history as a self-described “dirty trickster” indicated that the president’s decision to interfere with the nation’s justice system could be fraught with political risk. The move to grant Stone clemency underscored his continued willingness to disrupt the nation’s legal and political norms just months before an election.
The White House cited Stone’s age, 67, saying he would be at medical risk in prison while he continued his appeals.
Stone “maintains his innocence and has stated that he expects to be fully exonerated by the justice system. Mr. Stone, like every American, deserves a fair trial and every opportunity to vindicate himself before the courts. The President does not wish to interfere with his efforts to do so,” the White House said.
Democrats quickly slammed the decision as yet another instance of Trump’s undermining the nation’s justice system by protecting his friends and seeking to punish his enemies.
Bill Russo, a spokesman for former vice president Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, took issue with both the substance and the timing of the commutation.
“President Trump has once again abused his power, releasing this commutation on a Friday night, hoping to yet again avoid scrutiny as he lays waste to the norms and the values that make our country a shining beacon to the rest of the world,” he said in a statement. “He will not be shamed. He will only be stopped when Americans make their voice heard at the ballot box this fall. Enough.”
While most Republicans stayed quiet about Stone’s commutation, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the lone Senate Republican to vote to convict Trump during his impeachment trial, blasted the move.
“Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president,” he wrote on Twitter Saturday.
Stone is the latest in a series of controversial pardons or commutations Trump has handed down since taking office. Rather than following the traditional process run by the Justice Department on clemency decisions, Trump has often relied on appeals made to him by friends or has focused on cases championed in conservative media
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Among those who have received pardons or commutations from Trump are disgraced politician Rod R. Blagojevich, convicted junk bond king Michael Milken, former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza and former Army officer Clint Lorance, who was convicted of second-degree murder in 2013 for ordering his soldiers to open fire on three men in Afghanistan.
Trump’s clemency move on Stone, which went against the recommendation of his own Justice Department, is the latest sign of dysfunction within an administration that has received poor marks for its failure to control the coronavirus pandemic and over its response to the racial justice movement sparked by the killing of a black man by Minneapolis police in May.
The president signaled his intentions on Twitter last month, saying Stone “was a victim of a corrupt and illegal Witch Hunt” but “can sleep well at night!” President Trump then told reporters Friday that he is “looking at” pardoning Stone, as he continued to build suspense over whether he would intervene before Stone reported to prison next week.
“Well, I’ll be looking at it,” Trump said Friday, before traveling to South Florida for events including a fundraiser in Fort Lauderdale, where Stone lives. “I think Roger Stone was very unfairly untreated, as were many people.”
Stone was sentenced to three years and four months in prison after being convicted of seven felony counts including lying about his attempts to get details of Hillary Clinton’s private emails from the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, then threatening a witness who could contradict his story.
He had been ordered to report to prison by July 14. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson had given Stone a two-week delay to quarantine himself before traveling from South Florida to the prison Jesup, Ga. But she denied the two-month reprieve that Stone had requested with prosecutors’ assent.
An appeals court Friday evening also rejected Stone’s attorneys’ renewed request for a delay in his prison reporting date, ruling that they had failed to show why the reporting date was inappropriate or that he was likely to win an appeal for a new trial or reduced sentence. Stone’s defense earlier Friday, echoing Trump’s attacks against Stone’s treatment by prosecutors, argued that 20 inmates at Jesup have tested positive for the virus in the past two weeks, up from zero, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
Stone has argued that the judge and jury in his case were biased against him. Jackson rejected that claim in April, saying Stone’s argument that the forewoman’s anti-Trump political views rendered the verdict against him invalid “is not supported by any facts or data and it is contrary to controlling legal precedent.” Stone appealed her ruling to a higher court.
The Trump administration’s intervention in Stone’s case has roiled the Justice Department and the federal judiciary. Trump has repeatedly attacked the prosecutors, judge and jury. Trump also sent tweets suggesting that “everyone” involved in prosecuting the case could be sued.
All four of the prosecutors who handled the case withdrew after Barr publicly overruled their recommendation that Stone serve seven to nine years in prison. The suggestion of a more lenient sentence came after Trump complained about the initial recommendation, raising questions about White House interference with the independence of the Justice Department.
More than 2,000 former Justice Department employees subsequently signed a public letter urging Barr to resign, and the head of the Federal Judges Association called an emergency meeting to discuss the situation.
Barr went on to intervene in the case of another former administration staffer, moving in May to drop charges against Michael Flynn. Trump’s first national security adviser had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI but has sought to reverse his conviction after claiming that prosecutors mishandled his case.
In arguments and testimony, prosecutors revealed phone calls at critical times in 2016 among Stone, Trump and some of the highest-ranking officials in the Trump campaign: Stephen K. Bannon, campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Manafort’s deputy Rick Gates
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Gates and Bannon testified that the campaign viewed Stone as a sort of conduit to WikiLeaks who claimed — even before the Russian hacking was known — to have insider information. Gates testified that he overheard a phone call in which Trump seemed to discuss WikiLeaks with Stone, calling into question the president’s assertion to Mueller’s office that he did not remember talking about the organization with his longtime friend.
Prosecutors buttressed the witness testimony with call and message records, which they said helped show that Stone’s claims to the House Intelligence Committee were false.
Stone’s defense team urged jurors to treat his case as a referendum not on him but on Mueller’s entire Russia investigation.
Stone’s attorneys urged jurors to reframe the question from whether Stone lied to whether that mattered, asserting that his hectic efforts to get information from WikiLeaks never amounted to anything.
“So much of this case deals with that question that you need to ask … so what?” defense attorney Bruce Rogow said.
“There was nothing illegal about the campaign being interested in information that WikiLeaks was going to be sending out,” Rogow said.
“If that’s the state of affairs that we’re in, I’m pretty shocked,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Marando told jurors in closing arguments, saying, “Truth matters. Truth still matters.”
In Mueller’s report, the special counsel included Trump’s interactions with Stone among examples of potential obstruction by the president. The report noted the during the investigation, Trump commended Stone for having the “guts” to say that he would not testify against the president and called his friend “very brave.” Mueller said evidence supported the inference that Trump intended to signal that he would reward witnesses who could implicate him for their silence.