Trump advisers fracture over Roger Stone pardon
The president signals he's prepared to shield his
longtime adviser from prison time, but Stone has little support in the White
House.
By MARC
CAPUTO
07/09/2020
06:42 PM EDT
Roger Stone
is headed to prison next week unless Donald Trump intervenes. And a chorus of
outside allies is pressing the president to do just that — over the wishes of
White House and campaign aides who don’t like Stone and think Trump has nothing
to gain by helping him.
Both camps
expect Trump will at least split the difference by commuting Stone’s sentence,
according to interviews with nine sources familiar with the discussions. A
commutation would keep Stone from behind bars without wiping his record clean.
But Trump
being Trump, no one knows where he’ll land ahead of Stone’s Tuesday commitment
date.
Stone was
convicted in a case related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian
election interference investigation and has lost repeated appeals to avoid his
July 14 commitment date. He suffered another blow when Facebook booted him this
week for allegedly posting “inauthentic” information related to his trial and
clemency campaign.
Stone has
little support in the White House and the Trump campaign. Corey Lewandowski,
the 2016 campaign manager who advises the current reelection effort, has called
Stone a serial liar. Stone’s friends say there’s also animosity with the
campaign manager, Brad Parscale. Even Attorney General Bill Barr, who gummed up
other investigations into the president, supports Stone’s imprisonment.
But outside
the campaign and White House, Stone has support from influential backers that
include Fox News’s Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, Newsmax founder Chris Ruddy
and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a top Trump ally.
Gaetz has
been so aggressive pressing the president for a pardon that it’s led to
grumbling in the White House and among fellow Republican House members. Some of
them grew uneasy with him for lobbying the president on Air Force One during a
trip to Cape Canaveral to witness the SpaceX rocket launch in late May.
“Roger
Stone should not disproportionately bear the burden of the corrupt Mueller
investigation,” Gaetz said via Twitter on Wednesday. The day before, when a
conservative writer tweeted that Stone was heading to prison in a week, Gaetz
made a prediction: “No he is not.”
Gaetz
wouldn’t discuss his conversations with the president and pointed to his
numerous statements in support of Stone, including on ABC’s morning show “The
View.”
"Anything
I can say to Whoopie Goldberg, I can say to the president,” Gaetz told
POLITICO.
Inside the
White House and campaign, Trump advisors have hoped the problem would just go
away. They would prefer that the president let Stone go to prison and then
issue a pardon after the election, according to the sources with knowledge of
the discussions.
Two sources
said Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, favored the idea of a commutation that
would keep Stone out of prison but give the president the ability to reward
Stone’s loyalty and communicate his displeasure with the prosecution and Russia
investigation. But two other sources, including one close to Trump's
son-in-law, said Kushner hasn’t given the issue much thought.
“It is
correct that the option has been discussed, yes,” one senior administration
official, asked about the commutation issue and Kushner, said. The official,
who was not authorized to speak on the record, dismissed speculation that a
commutation would be a political stopgap to avoid the bad optics of a
full-blown pardon.
“The
counter-argument is if a pardon is warranted, a pardon is warranted,” the
source said. “You don’t tailor a legal decision based on reaction from
Democrats when they will criticize anyway.”
White House
Chief of staff Mark Meadows hasn't taken clear sides in the controversy but is
resigned to some sort of clemency, according to two other sources, given
Trump’s denouncements of the Mueller probe and its treatment of Stone.
“Roger was
a victim of a corrupt and illegal Witch Hunt, one which will go down as the
greatest political crime in history” Trump said last month via Twitter, echoing
comments he made this week to Real Clear Politics. “He can sleep well at night!”
But Stone,
who declined to comment for this article, hasn’t had many restful nights of
sleep lately, his friends and legal team say.
Stone has
repeatedly petitioned to delay his incarceration date, citing poor health and
his pending appeal. But the judge and Justice Department have refused, all but
forcing the matter into Trump's lap.
Those who
know Trump and Stone say they’ve had an up-and-down relationship over the
years. They think Trump is likely to grant clemency because of Stone’s loyalty,
his omerta-style silence and his defiance of Congress and the Department of
Justice. They also think Trump won't want to let Stone's conservative friends
down by allowing him to go to prison.
“The
president wants to look strong. He can’t get rolled by DOJ,” said one Trump
adviser who is advocating for Stone.
Featured in
the Netflix documentary "Get Me Roger Stone," Stone has deep roots in
conservative media, where he's achieved legendary status since starting his
political career on President Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign. Trump and Stone
were introduced in 1980 by Roy Cohn, the lawyer who represented and was later
lionized by the president, and is best known as former Sen. Joe McCarthy’s
attorney.
Stone
advised Trump during his first flirtation with a presidential bid ahead of
2000. He promoted a potential Trump candidacy in 2012 and was part of the 2016
campaign early on before the two had a falling out. Then followed a
rapprochement and the allegations — denied by Stone — that he served as a
liaison between the campaign and WikiLeaks for the release of emails hacked by
Russian intelligence to damage Hillary Clinton.
During the
2016 campaign, Stone made enemies of Lewandowski, a current Trump campaign
associate who could not be reached to comment for this article. When
Lewandowski lost his job, it was celebrated so publicly by Trump campaign
operative Michael Caputo, a longtime friend of Stone’s, that Caputo was
subsequently pressured to quit.
Michael
Caputo is pictured. | Getty Images
Trump
campaign operative Michael Caputo. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Caputo, now
a spokesman for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, is forbidden by
a court order from communicating with Stone but has made it clear he hopes the
president will grant him clemency.
Other
friends worry that Stone could meet the fate of his former lobbying partner and
longtime friend, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Manafort was
also convicted and imprisoned after the election and did not receive clemency
from the president.
Stone has
also been at loggerheads for years with another Trump adviser and Lewandowski
friend, Dave Bossie, who runs the group Citizens United. He sued Stone in 2008
for founding a rival anti-Hillary Clinton group, Citizens United Not Timid,
creating an obscene acronym. Stone has also been critical of Trump’s current
campaign manager, Parscale, who happens to live near him in Fort Lauderdale,
Florida. Neither Bossie nor Parscale returned messages for comment.
In the
administration, Barr has been the most vocal in opposing a Stone pardon, a move
that comes after Barr opposed a longer sentence meted out on the operative.
This week, the attorney general said he believed the 40-month sentence for
Stone is appropriate.
“I felt it
was an appropriate prosecution and I thought the sentence was fair,” Barr told
ABC, breaking with the president.
Trump’s
expected clemency for Stone was criticized by House Intelligence Committee
Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who said in a written statement Thursday that
Stone “lied before our Committee and was justly convicted for that crime.”
“Mr.
Stone’s lies to the Committee were in the service of protecting President Trump
and concealing his efforts to obtain advance notice and make use of documents
hacked by Russian intelligence services to his advantage in the 2016 campaign,”
Schiff said. “A pardon or commutation would only further demonstrate the
President’s contempt for the integrity of the justice system and the rule of
law.”
Betsy
Woodruff Swan, Jake Sherman, Alex Isenstadt and Tina Nguyen contributed to this
repor
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