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Roger Stone: Trump proves his love for 'law and
order' doesn't apply to friends
Analysis: The president’s commutation of his longtime
adviser’s prison sentence was spectacularly unsurprising
David Smith
in Washington
@smithinamerica
Sat 11 Jul
2020 04.09 BSTLast modified on Sat 11 Jul 2020 04.51 BST
The law and order president has decided that a
convicted criminal should not go to prison.
It may be
mere coincidence that Roger Stone is an old friend and fellow resident of
Florida with a shared crush on Richard Nixon.
It may also
be mere coincidence that Donald Trump made the announcement on a Friday night,
a graveyard shift that has become his favorite for firing inspectors general
and others who get in his way.
Stone was
convicted by a jury last November of obstructing a congressional investigation,
lying under oath to Congress and tampering with a witness. He did so to protect
Trump. The 67-year-old was scheduled to report by Tuesday to a federal prison
in Jesup, Georgia, to begin serving a sentence of three years and four months.
Three and a
half years into his presidency, Trump’s intervention was spectacularly
unsurprising. He did not grant Stone a full pardon that would have erased his
criminal record, which might perhaps have been too incendiary in an election
year. Even so, it was one of Trump’s most savage attacks yet on the rule of
law.
“Trump
commutes the prison sentence of Roger Stone while the officers that killed
Breonna Taylor are still free,” tweeted Senator Kamala Harris of California,
referring to an African American medical worker killed in Louisville, Kentucky,
earlier this year. “The two systems of justice in this country must end.”
Jeffrey
Toobin, the chief legal analyst for CNN, added on the network: “This is the
most corrupt and cronyistic act in perhaps all of recent history. Nixon at the
height of Watergate never pardoned or commuted the sentences of any of the
people involved in Watergate. He thought he could never get away with it.”
Personal
and political forces worked in favour of Stone, whose cause was reportedly
championed by the Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The self-proclaimed “dirty
trickster” and dapper dresser, who has Nixon’s face tattooed on his back, has
been pals with Trump since the 1980s, his longest-serving political adviser. Both
men are mavericks who relish riling liberals. Stone was involved in the 2016
election campaign and refused to flip in court.
According
to Howard Fineman, an NBC News analyst, Stone said of Trump earlier on Friday:
“He knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my
situation considerably. But I didn’t.” The implication being that Stone could
have revealed damaging information about the president if he chose.
Sparing
Stone also fits Trump’s “Obamagate” narrative that the special counsel Robert
Mueller’s investigation, which documented Russian interference in the 2016
election to boost Trump’s candidacy, was a hoax.
Stone was
convicted for lying to the House intelligence committee about his attempts to
contact WikiLeaks, the website that released damaging emails about Trump’s 2016
election rival Hillary Clinton. He was one of several Trump associates charged
with crimes in the investigation.
In a
statement on Friday, the White House said Stone was a “victim of the Russia
Hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an
attempt to undermine the Trump Presidency”.
It added:
“There was never any collusion between the Trump Campaign, or the Trump
Administration, with Russia. Such collusion was never anything other than a
fantasy of partisans unable to accept the result of the 2016 election.”
Mueller’s
investigation did find a total of 272 contacts between Trump’s campaign team
and Russia-linked operatives, including at least 38 meetings.
More
broadly, Trump, often frustrated by Congress or the constitution, has embraced
the pardon power like a medieval monarch. Among the beneficiaries have been the
conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, the ex-Arizona-county-sheriff Joe
Arpaio, the former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former New York
City police commissioner Bernie Kerik, the financier Michael Milken and the
newspaper publisher Conrad Black, who had written a laudatory book about the
president.
Trump even
commuted the prison sentence of the Democratic former Illinois Governor Rod
Blagojevich, who had been a contestant on Trump’s TV show Celebrity Apprentice.
Meanwhile the US attorney general, William Barr, is seeking to dismiss charges
against Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who admitted
lying to the FBI but is seen by Trump as another Mueller martyr.
Even as he
demands arrest and jail for protesters who topple statues, the president is
straining the justice system to breaking point with his selective application
of executive clemency. But what if he starts prosecuting perceived enemies,
too? Don’t expect Barr to stand in his way.
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Roger Stone: five things to know about Trump's
controversial ally
The president has commuted Stone’s sentence after he
was convicted of multiple crimes. Here’s what you need to know
Guardian
staff and agencies
Published
onSat 11 Jul 2020 03.15 BST
Who is
Roger Stone?
A master of
the dark arts of politics who cut his teeth on a Richard Nixon election
campaign, Roger Stone regularly gives Nixon’s trademark salute and has a tattoo
of the disgraced 37th president on his back. A self-described “dirty
trickster”, Stone, 67, is also a longtime friend of Donald Trump.
What was he
found guilty of?
Stone was
convicted in November 2019 of seven crimes, including obstruction of justice,
lying to Congress and witness tampering in the congressional investigation into
Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Stone had
boasted during the 2016 campaign that he was in contact with the WikiLeaks
founder, Julian Assange, through a trusted intermediary and hinted at inside
knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to release more than 19,000 emails hacked from
the servers of the Democratic National Committee.
Roger Stone
is a friend of Trump – does that mean he's above the law?
Read more
Stone did
not take the stand during his trial, did not speak at his sentencing, and his
lawyers did not call any witnesses in his defense.
Did he face
time in prison?
Stone was
sentenced in February by Judge Amy Berman Jackson to three years and four
months in prison.
In April,
Berman Jackson denied Stone’s request for a new trial. (Stone had argued the
jury forewoman in his case had been tainted by anti-Trump bias.) He was
scheduled to report to a prison in Jesup, Georgia, by Tuesday.
How did
Trump intervene?
The
president on Friday commuted Stone’s sentence. The commutation does not erase
Stone‘s felony convictions in the same way a pardon would, but it protects him
from serving prison time as a result.
In a
statement, the White House denounced Stone’s prosecution. “Roger Stone has
already suffered greatly. He was treated very unfairly, as were many others in
this case. Roger Stone is now a free man!”
Is this the
first time Trump has weighed in on Stone’s case?
No. Trump
has long said he thought Stone was being treated unfairly and Stone had
publicly been campaigning for a commutation.
Just before
the sentencing, Trump had suggested in a tweet that Stone was being subjected
to a different standard than several prominent Democrats. He railed that the
conviction “should be thrown out” and called the justice department’s initial
sentencing recommendation “horrible and very unfair”.
The
attorney general, William Barr, caused the recommendation to be changed,
prompting a call for his resignation from more than 2,600 former justice
department officials.
After
Stone’s sentencing, Trump said: “I’d love to see Roger exonerated, and I’d love
to see it happen because I personally think he was treated very unfairly.”
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