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“President Donald Trump on Friday commuted the sentence of his longtime political confidant Roger Stone… The move came just days before Stone was to begin serving a 40-month prison sentence for lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the House investigation into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia.” AP News
The right is divided over the commutation.
“Stone had no inside knowledge of Russian hacking or WikiLeaks’s role in disseminating stolen DNC emails; instead, he tried to parlay media gossip and what he heard from an intermediary into a sense that he knew more than he did. Never before has an alleged spy been such a fatuous figure and ridiculous braggart…
“There is no doubt, though, that Stone was guilty of perjury and a laughably ham-handed attempt at witness tampering. He was justly convicted of these charges and deserved to go to jail… Trump’s handling of the matter is indefensible. It is another indication of his perverse, highly personalized view of the criminal-justice system — and another reminder of the loathsome characters he’s surrounded himself with his entire adult life.”
The Editors, National Review
“Stone’s defenders have argued that the court was stacked against him and that his trial was unfair. There’s certainly something to that. Stone’s original sentence was nine years in prison, an excessive amount of time for an elderly, nonviolent, first-time offender. But that’s why the Justice Department intervened and reduced Stone’s sentence to 40 months. The DOJ did not, however, argue against the actual charges against Stone. And why would they? He was and still is obviously guilty.”
Kaylee McGhee, Washington Examiner
“The commutation of Stone barely stands out in the old gallery of White House pardons… Thomas Jefferson pardoned Erick Bollman for violations of the Alien and Sedition Act in the hope that he would testify against rival Aaron Burr for treason… Franklin Roosevelt also pardoned political allies, including Conrad Mann, who was a close associate of Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast. Pendergast made a fortune off illegal alcohol, gambling, and graft, and helped send Harry Truman into office…
“Richard Nixon was both giver and receiver of controversial pardons. He pardoned Jimmy Hoffa after the Teamsters Union leader had pledged to support his reelection bid. Nixon himself was later pardoned by Gerald Ford… To his credit, Ronald Reagan declined to pardon the Iran Contra affair figures, but his vice president, George Bush, did so after becoming president. Despite his own alleged involvement in that scandal, Bush still pardoned those other Iran Contra figures, such as Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.”
Jonathan Turley, The Hill
“Bill Clinton pardoned his own brother for felony distribution of cocaine. And a key witness in the Whitewater scandal for which he and Hillary Clinton were under investigation. And three others convicted in independent counsel Ken Starr’s probe. And Marc Rich, in what was a straight up political payoff. And his CIA director. And his HUD secretary. And eight people convicted in an investigation of his Agriculture Department…
“Obama also commuted the sentence of a U.S. soldier who passed top-secret information to WikiLeaks. He pardoned his former Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman, who’d been convicted of making false statements… So, as abuses of the pardon power go — and they do go — I can’t get too whipped up over President Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s 40-month sentence for non-violent criminal obstruction of a bogusly based and ridiculously over-prosecuted investigation.”
Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review
“This is an old story: an underlying investigation that results in no directly relevant criminal charges and spawns a mess of felony charges for obstructing an investigation that went nowhere. In a normal prosecutor’s office, which has thousands of pressing matters and limited resources, Stone likely would never have been indicted, or would have faced a relatively light charge. Believe it or not, this is a good thing — limited prosecutorial capacity is an important check on prosecutorial overreach and helps to focus resources on truly important matters…
“But special prosecutors, with near-limitless budgets and little meaningful oversight, tend to become perpetual motion machines. They generate new criminal charges further and further distant from the original allegation that caused the appointment in the first place. It is this tendency, among others, that led the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dazzling dissent in a case that upheld the special counsel law, to describe them as a wolf that, far from being dressed in sheep’s clothing, ‘comes as a wolf.’”
Brett L. Tolman, Fox News
The left is critical of the commutation.
The left is critical of the commutation.
Former special counsel Robert Mueller writes that a jury “determined [Stone] lied repeatedly to members of Congress. He lied about the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks. He lied about the existence of written communications with his intermediary. He lied by denying he had communicated with the Trump campaign about the timing of WikiLeaks’ releases. He in fact updated senior campaign officials repeatedly about WikiLeaks. And he tampered with a witness, imploring him to stonewall Congress…
“When a subject lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government’s efforts to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable… The jury ultimately convicted Stone of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and tampering with a witness. Because his sentence has been commuted, he will not go to prison. But his conviction stands.”
Robert S. Mueller III, Washington Post
“If the Justice Department showed the same care and concern for the defendants’ wellbeing in every case it pursued, it could defend its special circumstances for Stone. If the attorney general’s office showed the same zeal in opposing lengthy sentences for every defendant it prosecuted, it could justify its intervention in this case. If Trump was willing to free federal prisoners convicted of non-violent crimes who weren’t his friends or allies, he could claim a fig leaf of credibility here… Instead, the White House spent the last few weeks threatening protesters with ten-year prison sentences for vandalizing statues. The Trump administration believes in prison abolition for its henchmen and mass incarceration for everyone else.”
Matt Ford, New Republic
“According to a count by Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School, thirty-one of Trump’s thirty-six acts of clemency have been based on personal or political connections… But Trump had not, until now, used pardons and commutations to reward defendants who possessed incriminating information against him. The Stone commutation isn’t just a gift to an old friend—it is a reward to Stone for keeping his mouth shut during the Mueller investigation. It is, in other words, corruption on top of cronyism.”
Jeffrey Toobin, New Yorker
“It is not illegal for a U.S. citizen to act or attempt to act as a go-between between a presidential campaign and a foreign intelligence agency, and Stone was not charged with any crime in conjunction with his Trump-WikiLeaks communications. But it’s a different story for the campaign itself. At a minimum, the Trump campaign was vulnerable to charges of violating election laws… It was crucial to the Trump campaign that Stone keep silent and not implicate Trump in any way…
“Which is what Stone did. Stone was accused of—and convicted of—lying to Congress about his role in the WikiLeaks matter. Since Stone himself would have been in no legal jeopardy had he told the truth, the strong inference is that he lied to protect somebody else… ‘He knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.’… Stone said [this] on the record to one of the best-known reporters in Washington. In so many words, he seemed to imply: I could have hurt the president if I’d rolled over on him. I kept my mouth shut. He owes me.”
David Frum, The Atlantic
“Trump appears to be the first modern president to pardon someone for murder, and he’s done it three times — twice for military members who had been convicted and once for a soldier who was facing trial… Other pardons and commutations had to do with blatant issues of public corruption. Blagojevich is the most obvious one, but Kerik too was accused by the judge of trading on his public profile after 9/11 to enrich himself. The judge said Kerik using ‘that event for personal gain and aggrandizement is a dark place in the soul for me.’ And Arpaio explicitly and deliberately refused to follow the legal order of a judge…
“These officials have flouted the law in rather extraordinary ways for public officials, yet the drain-the-swamp president has seen fit to cut each of them a break… Trump is allowed to provide clemency to virtually any federal crime he wants, but the instances in which he’s chosen to exercise that power speak volumes.”
Aaron Blake, Washington Post
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