CONGRESS
'Historic corruption': 2 Republican senators
denounce Trump's commutation of Stone
GOP lawmakers have been mostly silent about the
commutation.
Mitt Romney
By ANDREW
DESIDERIO
07/11/2020
08:11 PM EDT
Sens. Mitt
Romney and Pat Toomey condemned President Donald Trump’s decision to commute
the prison sentence of his longtime confidant Roger Stone — the first elected
Republicans to denounce the president’s Friday night move.
“Unprecedented,
historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person
convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president,” Romney (R-Utah)
wrote on Twitter Saturday.
GOP
lawmakers have been mostly silent about the commutation, which came just after
a federal appeals court panel rejected Stone’s last-ditch bid to delay the
start of his 40-month prison sentence set to begin next week. Stone was
convicted on seven felony charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller,
including obstruction, witness tampering, and making false statements.
In a
statement, Toomey (R-Pa.) noted that the president “clearly has the legal and
constitutional authority to grant clemency for federal crimes,” but said
commuting Stone’s sentence was a “mistake” due in part to the severity of the
charges against him.
“While I
understand the frustration with the badly flawed Russia-collusion
investigation, in my view, commuting Roger Stone’s sentence is a mistake,” Toomey
said. “He was duly convicted of lying to Congress, witness tampering, and
obstruction a congressional investigation conducted by a Republican-led
committee.”
Toomey also
noted that Attorney General William Barr earlier this week called the
prosecution of Stone “righteous” and said his prison sentence of three years
and four months was “fair.”
Romney was
the lone Republican to vote to convict Trump in his impeachment trial in the
Senate, and has openly criticized Trump in ways that his fellow Republicans
have avoided. Toomey has occasionally broken with the president, in particular
over trade policies.
Barr
previously intervened in the Stone case to urge a more lenient sentence for
Stone after prosecutors initially asked for seven to nine years behind bars. At
the time, Barr expressed rare frustration with Trump, saying that the
president’s public comments on Justice Department cases, including Stone’s,
were making his job more difficult.
Senate
Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was supportive of the
sentence commutation in part because “this was a non-violent, first-time
offense” for Stone.
Similarly,
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, in announcing the commutation on
Friday, said Stone was “a victim of the Russia Hoax that the Left and its
allies in the media perpetuated for years.” McEnany also dismissed the charges
against Stone as “process-based” and said they “were the product of
recklessness borne of frustration and malice.”
Shortly
after Romney and Toomey commented, Mueller himself spoke out in rare form,
writing a Washington Post op-ed in which he defended his investigation from
Trump’s frequent attacks and said Stone “remains a convicted felon, and rightly
so,” despite Trump’s move.
“I feel
compelled to respond both to broad claims that our investigation was
illegitimate and our motives were improper, and to specific claims that Roger
Stone was a victim of our office,” Mueller wrote, calling Stone a “central
figure” in the investigation.
“When a
subject lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government’s
efforts to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable,” Mueller said of
Stone making false statements to Congress. “It may ultimately impede
those efforts.”
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