When Roger Stone was found guilty last fall on every charge he faced from Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, jail time looked likely. Seven-to-nine years, prosecutors recommended on Monday for the veteran Republican operative.
But such expectations were challenged by a 1:48 a.m. Tuesday tweet from Donald Trump, who suggested his eccentric ally has been mistreated by the criminal justice system. “This is a horrible and very unfair situation,” the president wrote. “The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!”
The tweet, fired off in the wee hours after his New Hampshire campaign rally, seemed to raise the likelihood that Trump might eventually pardon Stone, something he suggested in remarks to reporters last year when he expressed sympathy for the loyal operative and called the investigation that brought him down a “big hoax.” “I think it’s very tough what they did to Roger Stone, compared to what they do to other people on their side,” the president said in December. “And now they’re finding out it was all a big hoax. They’re finding out it was a horrible thing.”
Pardon or not, Trump’s Justice Department is already planning to reduce its sentencing request, according to The Washington Post, which noted Tuesday that the department’s “stunning rebuke of career prosecutors...will surely raise questions about political meddling in the case.” A senior Justice Department official claimed to the paper that the decision on Stone’s sentencing request was made before Trump’s tweet.
News of the shift prompted criticism on Twitter and comparisons to a banana republic. “They’ll probably recommend no jail time, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a show on Fox News,” tweeted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Former Senator Claire McCaskill wrote: “Our country has struggled to keep the blindfold on Lady Justice. Trump is ripping it off and stomping on it. So depressing.”
Stone, a self-styled dirty trickster with a tattoo of Richard Nixon across his back, allegedly acted as a middleman between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks during the 2016 race. He was convicted in November of lying to Congress about his contacts with Julian Assange’s organization and attempting to cover it up by tampering with witnesses and withholding evidence from investigators. Along with Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, the longtime Trump associate was one of the most prominent figures brought down by Mueller’s Russia probe, which found the Trump campaign had welcomed Moscow’s interference and that the president had attempted to kneecap the investigation itself. Attorney General William Barr, however, went beyond Mueller’s report in clearing the president of obstruction of justice, and Democrats declined to impeach Trump at the time—though they would later take that step after evidence emerged that he attempted to coerce Ukraine to interfere with the 2020 election by investigating the Bidens.
Trump has described both investigations as politically motivated hoaxes, and has raged against those involved. He has also expressed sympathy for some of his loyalists who were ensnared, including Manafort (a “brave man”) and Flynn (his life was “totally destroyed”). With his attorney general, he has threatened figures associated with the “witch hunt,” including James Comey, now the subject of a Justice department investigation. If he were to take the extraordinary step of pardoning Stone, a convicted political ally, it would represent yet another fulfillment of one of his strongman fantasies of putting himself and his friends above the law.
Such a move would not be without precedent for Trump. In 2017, he pardoned Joe Arpaio, the Arizona sheriff who thumbed his nose at a court order to stop racial profiling of Latinos. Giving Stone a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card would seem a step beyond pardoning a political ally, though, given the fact that Stone’s crimes were committed in service of his campaign and unearthed through an inquiry in which he was the subject. Pardoning Stone would not only undercut prosecutors’ original recommendation; it would be a symbolic middle finger to those who had the temerity to investigate him.
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