Robert Mueller breaks his silence and condemns
Trump for commuting Roger Stone's sentence
US special counsel defends his investigation into
allegations of corruption during 2016 election
Former special counsel Robert Mueller has broken his
silence in a Washington Post story castigating Donald Trump for commuting Roger
Stone’s prison sentence and defending his two-year investigation. Photograph:
Alex Brandon/AP
Joanna
Walters in New York
@Joannawalters13
Published
onSun 12 Jul 2020 01.54 BST
The former
special counsel Robert Mueller made a rare move on Saturday to publicly defend
his two-year investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump
campaign and Russia in the 2016 election – and to castigate US president Donald
Trump’s decision to commute Roger Stone’s prison sentence.
Mueller
wrote an opinion article for the Washington Post [paywall] published under the
headline “Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so”.
“The work
of the special counsel’s office – its report, indictments, guilty pleas and
convictions – should speak for itself,” he wrote.
“But 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 ...
“Stone was
prosecuted and convicted because he committed federal crimes. He remains a
convicted felon, and rightly so.”
Stone was a
former campaign adviser to the president, convicted in November 2019 of seven
crimes including obstruction of justice, lying to Congress and witness
tampering.
The 2017-19
Mueller investigation uncovered evidence of communications between Stone and
WikiLeaks related to the release of hacked Democratic party emails during the
2016 election, discovered in a separate inquiry into Russian intelligence
officers charged with hacking the emails and staging their release.
The
partially released Mueller report in April 2019 described Russian efforts to
tamper with the election and the Trump campaign’s receptivity to certain “Russian
offers of assistance to the campaign”.
It outlined
actions by Trump that may have amounted to obstruction of justice and
concluded: “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a
crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Mueller
also concluded he did not have the power to charge Trump even if he thought it
was warranted.
Mueller
wrote: “The special counsel’s office identified two principal operations
directed at our election: hacking and dumping Clinton campaign emails, and an
online social media campaign to disparage the Democratic candidate.
“We also
identified numerous links between the Russian government and Trump campaign
personnel – Stone among them. We did not establish that members of the Trump
campaign conspired with the Russian government …
“The
investigation did, however, establish that the Russian government perceived it
would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome. [And]
that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen
and released through Russian efforts.”
Trump has
repeatedly attempted to discredit Mueller and his investigations.
Mueller has
kept his counsel since he testified in Congress in July last year. It was a
muted affair, and many perceived Trump was emboldened in his efforts to seek
assistance in his current election campaign from the Ukraine.
This led to
the historic impeachment of the president, and Trump’s ultimate acquittal by
the Senate earlier this year.
On Saturday
Mueller wrote: “Russia’s actions were a threat to America’s democracy. It
was critical that they be investigated and understood.”
Trump's commutation of ally Roger Stone's
sentence sparks outrage
Mitt Romney calls move ‘unprecedented, historic
corruption’
Analyst: ‘It’s a disgraceful, dark day for American
democracy’
Joanna
Walters in New York
@Joannawalters13
Published
onSat 11 Jul 2020 17.23 BST
Outrage is
growing among opponents of Donald Trump’s decision to commute the prison
sentence of his longtime friend and notorious Republican fixer Roger Stone.
Special counsel Robert Mueller weighed in on Saturday night, declaring that
“Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so.”
The
president commuted Stone’s sentence on Friday despite the US attorney general
previously having declared Stone’s conviction “righteous”.
Criticism
on Saturday came from both sides of the political aisle.
Adam
Schiff, a California Democrat and chairman of the House intelligence committee
– the congressional panel Stone was convicted of lying to about aspects of the
Trump-Russia investigation – called the decision “destructive of the criminal
justice system and the rule of law” on Saturday morning.
Senator
Mitt Romney, a Republican of Utah, described the decision as “unprecedented,
historic corruption”.
Trump
commuted the sentence of Stone on Friday night. He was a former campaign
adviser to the president and was due on Tuesday to begin a sentence of three
years and four months in jail.
Stone, 67,
was convicted in November 2019 of obstructing a congressional investigation
into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.
On Saturday
night, the Washington Post published a rare opinion piece by Robert Mueller,
who was appointed to investigate allegations that Trump and his 2016 election
campaign colluded with Russia to help Trump beat Hillary Clinton to the White
House.
In the
process of the Trump-Russia investigation, which led to a string of
indictments, Mueller and his team revealed evidence of communications between
Stone and WikiLeaks related to the release of hacked Democratic party emails.
Mueller
wrote on Saturday: “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.
“The Russia
investigation was of paramount importance. Stone was prosecuted and convicted
because he committed federal crimes. He remains a convicted felon, and rightly
so.”
Trump
mounted sustained attacks on Mueller’s investigation while it was under way.
Trump said
on Friday that Stone was targeted in an “illegal witch-hunt”, prompting the
global politics professor and political columnist Brian Klass to tweet on
Saturday: “This is a complete lie. Roger Stone committed a series of
well-documented crimes that are not seriously contested.”
He added:
“This is what despots do: wield the law like a weapon to attack political
opponents and protect loyal cronies. It’s a disgraceful, dark day for American
democracy.”
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.
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.
In a
statement released on Friday evening, the White House said: “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!”
The
commutation does not erase Stone’s felony convictions the way a pardon would,
but it allows Stone to avoid setting foot in prison for his crimes.
A presidential
pardon would have acknowledged Stone’s guilt, while Trump has been encouraging
Stone to fight his conviction.
Mueller
added in his Washington Post article that: “we made every decision in Stone’s
case, as in all our cases, based solely on the facts and the law and in
accordance with the rule of law. The women and men who conducted these
investigations and prosecutions acted with the highest integrity. Claims to the
contrary are false.”
Meanwhile,
Romney has not been joined by a rush of other congressional Republicans
criticizing Trump. The South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Trump
ally, has said the commutation was justified.
But later
on Saturday, Republican senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania put out a statement
saying that “commuting Roger Stone’s sentence is a mistake”.
Meanwhile,
Schiff continued, in an interview on NBC on Saturday morning: “If you lie for
the president, if you cover up for the president … you get a pass from Donald
Trump. That’s the message.”
He
continued that the decision showed there were two rules of law, “one for the
cronies of Donald Trump, one for everyone else” and that the president’s signal
was “that ‘it’s OK to lie to Congress as long as it’s to protect me.’ That can
never be OK.”
On Friday
night, the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, another California Democrat,
told CNN that there should be legislation to make it illegal for a president to
pardon someone if “the crime that they are in jail for was caused by protecting
the president”.
That is
unlikely to happen, and Trump hasn’t pardoned Stone. The constitution gives the
president full pardon power over individuals.
Leaving the
White House on Saturday evening for a visit to patients at a local hospital,
Trump reiterated that: “Roger Stone was treated horribly. He was treated
very unfairly.”
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