Trump commutes ex-campaign adviser's sentence for 7 felony crimes
White House denounces case but does not say President's long-time friend is innocent of the charges
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Roger Stone, a former campaign adviser of US President Donald Trump, celebrating outside his home in Florida after his sentence was commuted on Friday. The White House statement said that Stone should not have been pursued because prosecutors ultimately filed no charges of an underlying conspiracy between Mr Trump's campaign and Russia.
PHOTO: REUTERS
WASHINGTON • President Donald Trump has commuted the sentence of long-time friend Roger Stone for seven felony crimes, using the power of his office to spare a former campaign adviser days before Stone was to report to a federal prison to serve a 40-month term.
In a lengthy written statement punctuated by the sort of inflammatory language and angry grievances characteristic of the President's Twitter feed, the White House denounced the "overzealous prosecutors" who convicted Stone on "process-based charges" stemming from the "witch hunts" and "Russia hoax" investigation.
The statement did not assert that Stone was innocent of the false statements and obstruction counts, only that he should not have been pursued because prosecutors ultimately filed no charges of an underlying conspiracy between Mr Trump's campaign and Russia.
"Roger Stone has already suffered greatly," it said.
"He was treated very unfairly, as were many others in this case. Roger Stone is now a free man!"
The commutation, announced late on a Friday, when potentially damaging news is often released, was the latest action by the Trump administration upending the justice system to help the President's convicted friends.
The Justice Department moved in May to dismiss its own criminal case against Mr Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
And last month, Mr Trump fired Mr Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney whose office prosecuted Michael Cohen, the President's former personal lawyer, and has been investigating Mr Rudy Giuliani, another of Mr Trump's lawyers.
Democrats quickly condemned the President's decision, characterising it as an abuse of the rule of law.
"With this commutation, Trump makes clear that there are two systems of justice in America: one for his criminal friends, and one for everyone else," said Representative Adam Schiff, a leader of the drive to impeach Mr Trump last year for pressuring Ukraine to incriminate his domestic rivals.
Two House committee chairmen quickly announced that they would investigate the circumstances of the commutation, suggesting that it was a reward for Stone's silence protecting the President.
"No other president has exercised the clemency power for such a patently personal and self-serving purpose," said a statement issued by Democrats Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney.
Stone, 67, a long-time Republican operative, was convicted of obstructing a congressional investigation into Mr Trump's 2016 campaign and possible ties to Russia.
Prosecutors convinced jurors that he lied under oath, withheld a trove of documents and threatened an associate with harm if he cooperated with congressional investigators.
Stone maintained his innocence and claimed prosecutors wanted him to offer information about Mr Trump that he said did not exist.
As his time to report to prison neared, Stone openly lobbied for clemency, maintaining that he could die in prison and emphasising that he had stayed loyal to the President rather than help investigators.
"He knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him," Stone told journalist Howard Fineman on Friday shortly before the announcement. "It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn't."
In an interview with Fox News last week, he characterised himself as collateral damage in the quest to target Mr Trump.
"He is aware that the people trying to destroy Michael Flynn, now trying to destroy me, are the people trying to destroy him," Stone said.
In an appearance on Fox last month, Stone even suggested that he wanted to help Mr Trump win in November, saying his biggest fear of going to prison other than his health was "that I may not be free to do everything within my power to re-elect this President".
While it was not clear when the two last spoke before the decision, Mr Trump called Stone on Friday to deliver the news of his clemency personally, according to an official briefed on the conversation.
Stone, a self-styled political trickster, was an aide early in Mr Trump's presidential campaign before departing in August 2015.
He remained an informal adviser to Mr Trump throughout the race.
NYTIMES, BLOOMBERG
