President Trump Commutes Sentence of Roger Stone
The action ends legal drama around the president’s longtime political adviser
wsj.com
8:07 PM
WASHINGTON—President Trump on Friday commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, ending the legal drama around his friend and longtime political adviser.
Mr. Trump’s action brings to a close one of the final remaining cases stemming from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race and whether anyone in the Trump campaign was involved.
Mr. Trump has issued high-profile pardons and at least one controversial commutation, but his grant of clemency to Mr. Stone marks the first time he has used his authority to help one of his close associates. His former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn were also charged in connection with the Mueller investigation; neither has received a pardon.
Mr. Stone was arrested in January 2019 as part of Mr. Mueller’s investigation. He was convicted in federal court in November of making false statements and trying to impede a congressional investigation into Russian election interference. The jury found that he had misled lawmakers about his efforts to contact WikiLeaks, which had published Democratic emails stolen by Russia. He also was convicted of tampering with a witness—a friend and New York comedian who had evidence to contradict Mr. Stone.
Mr. Stone was scheduled to report July 14 to a federal prison camp in Georgia to begin serving a 40-month sentence.
Lawyers for Mr. Stone had asked the court to allow him to delay reporting until September, citing fears that Mr. Stone, 67 years old, could contract Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. That request was opposed by the Justice Department and rebuffed by the judge who oversaw his case.
The Stone proceeding was unusual from the start. Early on, Mr. Stone posted a video on how to dress for court, and he was banned at one point from using social media after he posted a picture of the judge with a crosshairs near her head. The trial included a dispute over whether prosecutors could play a clip from a mob film and whether Mr. Stone had made threats against a witness’s dog.
Career prosecutors initially recommended that he serve the standard sentence for his crimes—more than seven years behind bars. A day later, the Justice Department asked for less time, an unusual move that prompted the resignation of at least one prosecutor.
Aaron Zelinsky, one of the prosecutors in the case, testified before Congress last month that supervisors in the federal prosecutors office in Washington told him Mr. Stone would receive special treatment “because of his relationship with the president.” Mr. Zelinsky said the U.S. Attorney in Washington was “receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels” of the department to “cut Stone a break.”
The day of Mr. Zelinsky’s testimony, a Justice Department spokeswoman defended the agency’s decision regarding Mr. Stone’s sentence as appropriate and not driven by requests for leniency from the president.
High-profile advocates pressed publicly and privately for Mr. Trump to intervene in the case.
“Roger Stone should not disproportionately shoulder the burden of a corrupt investigation,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.), an ally of Mr. Trump, said in an interview Friday. “Roger is no saint. He says and does things all the time that I don’t agree with, but I don’t believe in putting people in jail because of their politics.”
Mr. Stone has been a Republican operative for decades, beginning in 1972 when he served as a junior staffer on President Nixon’s reelection campaign. He went on to work for Ronald Reagan in his presidential bid. When in New York organizing for the Reagan campaign in 1979, he was introduced to Mr. Trump by attorney Roy Cohn.
Mr. Stone registered as a lobbyist on behalf of the Trump Organization in the late 1990s and early 2000s, according to public records. Around that time, he began counseling Mr. Trump on his political ambitions, and the two became friends.
Although Mr. Stone was sidelined from mainstream Republican politics following salacious revelations about his personal life in the mid-1990s, he continued to advise Mr. Trump for years, including helping to lead Mr. Trump’s aborted 2000 presidential campaign on the Reform Party ticket. He served on the Trump 2016 campaign when it started but severed ties in the summer of 2015. |
