Roger Stone Prosecuted And Convicted For Committing Federal Crimes: Robert Mueller
Washington:
Donald Trump may have commuted Roger Stone’s prison term, but the president’s long-standing ally remains a convicted criminal, former special adviser Robert Mueller said on Saturday.
Stone, 67, was scheduled to start serving a 40-month prison sentence Tuesday after he was convicted on seven counts of crime originally brought by Mueller in the investigation into the collusion in Russia.
Charges include falsifying a witness and obstructing the House’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to help it win the 2016 elections.
In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Saturday, Mueller defended his probe as “of paramount importance”, rejecting White House claims that he wanted to get Trump out and those who worked with him.
“Stone has been prosecuted and convicted for committing federal crimes. He remains a convicted criminal, and rightly so,” wrote Mueller as the Democrats – and two Republican senators – piled on Trump so that he intervenes again in the judicial system to help an ally.
Senator Mitt Romney, who infuriated Trump when he became the only Republican to vote to convict the president in his impeachment trial, fired no punches on Saturday.
“Unprecedented historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lies to protect this same president,” he tweeted.
Another Republican senator, Pat Toomey, also criticized Trump but in milder terms, saying that Stone having been duly convicted, it was “a mistake” to commute his sentence.
Trump defended his Friday night decision to commute Stone’s sentence, saying Stone and others convicted of crimes in the Russia investigation were caught in a “witch hunt”.
“They were all treated unfairly, and what I have done, I will tell you this: people are extremely happy because in this country they want justice,” Trump told reporters.
Most Republicans have remained largely silent on the issue, while Democratic critics led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have unanimously condemned Trump.
– “Spreading corruption” –
“President Trump’s decision to commute the sentence of senior campaign adviser Roger Stone, who could directly implicate him in a criminal offense, is an astounding act of corruption,” she tweeted.
Pelosi called for legislation “to ensure that no president can forgive or commute the sentence of an individual engaged in a camouflage campaign to protect that president from criminal prosecution”.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden intervened without mentioning Stone by name.
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in modern American history,” he tweeted.
“Every day he stays in power, he threatens the future of our democracy more. We have to vote in November,” Biden wrote.
The flamboyant Stone, a longtime political activist and consultant – he even sports a tattoo of his former president, Richard Nixon – is easily recognizable by his dark glasses and bowler hat.
He and Trump were introduced in the 1980s and would have been immediately successful.
Trump’s action instantly led to new accusations that the President intervened freely in the U.S. justice system to help his friends and allies, and to punish critics and perceived enemies.
In a very unusual decision in May, the U.S. Department of Justice decided to file its own case against Michael Flynn, former Trump national security adviser, although he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. A federal judge has requested a new judicial review of the case.
Stone was the first person directly involved in Trump’s campaign to receive leniency.
Senior Trump campaign official had sent Stone to prosecute documents from WikiLeaks regarding thousands of hacked emails from Democratic accounts – a leak that fueled Republican attacks on the opponent of Trump in 2016, Hillary Clinton.
Trump has denied knowledge of such relationships with WikiLeaks.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
