Donald Trump’s late-night Roger Stone pardon should come as a surprise to no one. Instead, the concern should focus on how lawmakers can prevent a travesty of justice like this from ever happening again.
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In November of 2019, the conservative political consultant and lobbyist added another title to his arsenal: convicted felon. Yes, Roger Stone was convicted on 7 counts, including witness tampering regarding the Trump impeachment investigation and lying to the Mueller team. On February 20, 2020, he was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison. However, on Friday night, Trump claimed that his friend was “treated very unfairly” (despite having a fair trial), so he handed down a Roger Stone pardon and gifted his crafty and cheating chum with instant clemency.
Needless to say, the Roger Stone pardon was met with immediate condemnation.
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California tweeted that “Stone lied and intimidated witnesses to hide Trump’s exploitation of the Russian hack of his opponent’s campaign.”
“With Trump, there are now two systems of justice in America: One for Trump’s criminal friends and one for everyone else,” Schiff said.
Roger Stone was “a victim of the Russia Hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump Presidency.” – Trump White House
GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah called the commutation an “unprecedented, historic corruption.”
“An American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president,” he tweeted.
Former vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden said in a statement that Trump “has once again abused his power, releasing this commutation on a Friday night, hoping to yet again avoid scrutiny as he lays waste to the norms and values that make our country a shining beacon to the rest of the world.”
“He will not be shamed. He will only be stopped when Americans make their voice heard at the ballot box this fall. Enough!” Biden added.
In a rare public rebuke, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller also spoke out against the Roger Stone pardon.
“Congress also investigated and sought information from Stone. A jury later determined he lied repeatedly to members of Congress. He lied about the identity of his intermediary to WikiLeaks. He lied about the existence of written communications with his intermediary. He lied by denying he had communicated with the Trump campaign about the timing of WikiLeaks’ releases. He in fact updated senior campaign officials repeatedly about WikiLeaks. And he tampered with a witness, imploring him to stonewall Congress,” Mueller wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Saturday evening.
“The jury ultimately convicted Stone of obstruction of a congressional investigation, five counts of making false statements to Congress and tampering with a witness. Because his sentence has been commuted, he will not go to prison. But his conviction stands.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that for Trump to be able to commute or issue a pardon for Stone “based on the crime assisting the president, is ridiculous.”
“There ought to be a law,” she continued. “I’m recommending that we pass a law that presidents cannot issue a pardon if the crime that the person is in jail for is one that is caused by protecting the President, which this was.”
Speaker Pelosi has a valid point.
For as much as Donald Trump has turned a blind eye to the constitution and bent the rule of law to benefit himself personally, it’s time for a constitutional amendment to better define the parameters of the presidency.
Or, in other words (and despite the Roger Stone pardon), it’s time to establish legal language to explicitly explain that the President of the United States is NOT above the law.
NO MORE using the presidential pardon to reward friends who help cover up crimes committed by the sitting president. (That means you, Donald!)
However, there is one possible saving grace. It’s called Assembly Bill 6653 and it comes from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Signed into law last October, AB6653 enables New York district attorneys to prosecute (without the possibility of a presidential pardon) the friends and family members of any president who pardoned them for federal convictions. Among those who can be prosecuted are associates with information relevant to a civil or criminal investigation of the president.
And that would be Roger Stone.
Stay tuned…
I like the idea from Nancy Pelosi. Change the law so it cannot happen again. But I also like what is going on in New York. If they have a law Trump cannot touch that is even better. They can go after Roger Stone and Trump too.