Trump expected to commute Roger Stone sentence, days before prison term set to begin
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Trump expected to commute Roger Stone sentence, days before prison term set to begin
President Trump is expected to announce that he will commute Roger Stone's sentence, just days before the longtime political operative is slated to report to prison to serve more than three years for charges stemming from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, Fox News has learned.
Sources told Fox News Friday that the president could announce a commutation of Stone's sentence as early as Friday evening.
The president, as recently as Friday morning, has said he was "looking at" offering Stone clemency, saying he was "very unfairly treated."
Stone was set to report to prison on July 14 to serve 40 months. He was sentenced in February to more than three years in prison after being convicted in November 2019 on seven counts of obstruction, witness tampering and making false statements to Congress on charges that stemmed from Mueller's investigation. Stone, however, has appealed his conviction and continues to deny any wrongdoing.
Trump, for weeks, has signaled he could be open to granting Stone clemency — tweeting last month that Stone was "a victim of a corrupt and illegal Witch Hunt, one which will go down as the greatest political crime in history. He can sleep well at night!"
During an exclusive interview with Fox News this week, Stone said he was "praying" for Trump to intervene.
When asked whether he'd prefer a pardon or a commutation of his sentence, Stone said "either one obviously would have an effect, in my opinion, of saving my life."
A presidential pardon completely absolves an individual of the crime he or she is found to have committed. A commutation lessens the punishment or eliminates jail time, but leaves the conviction standing.
"I have deep concerns about going to a prison where there absolutely is COVID virus, and, therefore, either one would have an effect of saving my life," Stone said.
He added: "If I should be fortunate enough to get a commutation, I would continue to fight for vindication."
As of Thursday evening, Stone said he had not received any formal communication from the White House on a potential pardon or commutation of his sentence.
I think I'll be the last person to know," Stone told Fox News. "He hates leaks, and he hates to be told what to do. I have instructed my lawyers not to contact the lawyers at the White House."
"The president, who I've known for 40 years, has an incredible sense of fairness. 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.
He added: "I certainly think it could happen. I'm not going to second-guess the president."
Stone was not charged with any underlying crime of coordinating with Russia during the 2016 presidential election, though Mueller's team investigated Stone over tweets claiming to have information about WikiLeaks document dumps prior to their release.
When asked whether Stone felt WikiLeaks influenced the 2016 election, he said: "Yes. All of it."
"My whole purpose in hyping Wikileaks on Twitter was to make sure the media didn't sweep it under the rug, only because I was told it was politically significant," Stone said of his tweets in 2016, which he said were "not specific," and simply flagged that a WikiLeaks document dump "would be big" and was coming.
"I never discussed it with Trump. I have no idea what he thought about it, we never discussed it," Stone said. "You have to understand something about Donald Trump—when you talk to him on the phone, he talks and you listen. That's kind of the way it works."
When asked whether Stone had any regrets over his involvement in 2016, he said no.
"I engaged in legitimate, perfectly legal political activity which Mueller's corrupt investigation chose to criminalize," Stone said. "I thought the results of the 2016 election were crucial."
Meanwhile, earlier this week, Facebook announced it had removed a network of accounts on the platform and on Instagram allegedly linked to Stone. The company said the accounts were allegedly involved in "coordinated inauthentic behavior in the United States." The networks, according to Facebook, were focused on domestic audiences.
Facebook said it "identified the full scope" of the networks "following the recent public release of search warrants pertaining to the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in response to a joint petition from The New York Times, CNN, the Associated Press, The Washington Post, and Politico."
"Our investigation linked this network to Roger Stone and his associates," Facebook said Wednesday.
Stone, however, denied being linked to the accounts, calling Facebook's accusations "defamatory," and said he did not think it was "coincidental" that they made the announcement this week.
"They'll have a chance to prove it. Words on a press release are assertions and accusations. It is false," Stone said. "It is put up or shut up time very soon. They'll get a chance to show me the illegitimate sites. They don't exist. I don't own hundreds of Facebook pages and I never have."
Stone claimed that Facebook's actions were "attempted character assassination to derail clemency."
Stone told Fox News he plans to file a lawsuit against the social media giant.
"My lawsuit against Facebook will be a defamation suit," he said. "They have accused me of doing something that they imply is illegal and violated their rules."
He added: "It's not true. I can prove it's not true."
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Yeah, never saw this coming.../s
It's a done deal.
One proven liar pardoning another proven liar.
I guess it pays to be a scumbag and loyal to the scumbag in chief.
True. However, no matter if Stone did not serve any time in prison, he is still a convicted criminal. He will never be allowed to vote. He will always be a convicted criminal. The fact that Trump commutated his time to me served to zero does not change anything other than Stone does not have to serve any time in prison. It does not in any way negate his conviction.
I think this is something that has yet to be explained to Stone, as he is doing high fives, and glad handing everyone as if he has had his conviction overturned.
Once Stone learns that all the commutation means is that he does not have to serve time, he will likely be singing another tune. As his being a convicted criminal will follow him all the rest of his life.
And I wonder how many of his good'olboy-buddybusters will still want to hang around with a known criminal even if his prison time has been commutated. Not many I would think, as hanging out with Stone very well could cast suspicion on them.
I will be interesting to see if thinks work out for Stone as he thought it would.
for now,
stone turned down a full pardon so he could clear his name in court.
Because Trump is not fully pardoning Stone, he can proceed with an appeal of his conviction that could allow him to clear his name,
a guilty man would have taken the full pardon and been done with it.
Stone was out celebrating. At least he was wearing a mask...
Do you understand the difference between a pardon and commuting a sentence? Because your comment tells me you DON'T understand the difference.
So like with all your other accusations about Trump, you're speculating at best.
Well, thank you very much for pointing out my error.
Let me correct it for you.
''A proven liar commuting the sentence of a proven liar''.
There ya go, Jeremy.
So a politician looking out for somebody. That happened over 1000 times last adminstration and you all were silent.
A couple of things Jeremy, you have no idea if I was silent or not. Don't assume things you have no idea of. You know what they say about assuming, don't you? And you might want to re-read my comment, I said they were both lairs and that is a correct statement.
How many of those 1000's of times were presidential commutations?
If you had done your research you'd know that the pair have been proven liars together long before Trump became president.
Cheers
Blah, blah, blah blah.
Try re-reading what I said; "you all were silent." Operative word is ALL. As in collectively. If I were directing the comment specifically to you the word ALL would not have been present in the sentence.
If you use the term ''you all'' were silent that would include me since you directed the comment to me. And you have no idea if I was silent or not. Actually have no idea if any of the other ''you all'' were or were not silent
Cheers.
So it included you. So what. It's not going to change a damn thing. You are getting worked up about semantics.
Not getting worked up about anything. Just pointing out you don't know what you're talking about.
Remember, you engaged me in comments. Don't like my responses don't engage me. Pretty simple.
Cheers.
cool, that always works out in an election year.
And next will be the Durham report, which now I read they plan on dragging out in October.
Funny how these things line up...
It's a case of Trump doing what all his experts and advisors telling him what he should not do, and Trump doing it anyway. And his experts and advisors telling him what he should do, and Trump refusing to do.
I mean....after all....what do they know? Trump knows everything there is to know about everything anyway. His experts and advisors are only there for him t have someone to blame when his own decisions go bad. Which they do most of the time.
Good. He didn’t deserve to go to prison.
You're kidding, right? If for no other reason, he should go to prison for looking stupid on a regular basis.
his wife lays out his clothes every morning. he picked out his eyeglass frames and tattoo.
Big mistake. This will actually cost trump votes. I've got to believe Roger Stone is blackmailing Trump.